Larceny, Adventuring, and Dragons: A Thief's Tale
by professorkant
Summary: Lokir was a thief, or so his father told him. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth, because Lokir messed up. Big time. But before he can do it again, he is saved by a strange woman named Rayla, who somehow knows his name, and for some reason needs his help. And no matter how hard he tries, Lokir cannot escape this woman—or the mysterious destiny she holds.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey, guys! So, this is my first story here, and I hope you'll bear with me. I've always wondered about certain characters' backstories, and so this idea morphed into a story. Please forgive any errors you find here, and send me a review if you can! Thanks.**

**Here's the full summary, because I couldn't fit it all into a 384 character limit. Hopefully it isn't as lacking.**

_Lokir was a thief. At least, that was what his father told him. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth, because Lokir messed up. Big time. Before he can do something stupid during his execution, he is saved by a mysterious woman named Rayla—who somehow knows his name, and for some reason needs his help. _

_But Lokir did not enjoy adventures. He much preferred skulking in the dark whenever he needed something, and returning home to revel in his victory with some ale when he didn't. However, it seems that fate has other plans for him—plans to strip away his identity and give him a brand new one that would change everything he thought was true._

**Just in case, here's a disclaimer: I do not own Skyrim.**

* * *

Lokir's life was falling apart, and this time it wasn't entirely his fault.

At least, that was what he told himself. By the time the last person in the cart—a mysterious woman that he barely paid any attention to—awoke, he wasn't so sure that he wasn't responsible for yet another turn of bad luck. After all, it was his idea to steal a horse. In broad daylight. But honestly, no one expected someone to steal a horse in the middle of the day, which made it the perfect plan!

Or so he had thought. He'd had quite a bit of time to think about it for the past hour or so, and he was convinced that the Stormcloaks were somehow responsible for his terrible misfortune. If they hadn't started this ridiculous civil war, the Empire would have stayed more focused on the Thalmor and less focused on…whatever it was that the Stormcloaks were supposed to be, which meant that he could have gotten away with his crime more easily.

"Hey, you," the man with the long blonde hair and a Stormcloak cuirass on said. Lokir looked up, then realized that he was speaking to the mysterious woman who must have gotten caught in the trap too. "You're finally awake."

The woman in question glared at him and spat hair out of her face. For the first time, Lokir actually looked at her. She seemed to be about his age—that is, in the range of twenty-four–and was pretty, in a sense, though her face was as covered in dirt and grime as any of them. Oddly, her hair was pure white, and as she blew more of it out of her face, green eyes looked at the Stormcloak soldier with something close to disgust. She was very clearly a Nord, and though she lacked the traditional blonde hair and blue eyes, she still had the sharp features of a Nord woman.

"I have a name, you know," she said, adjusting the bonds around her wrists. "It's Rayla—though it's not like you care."

The soldier cocked an eyebrow, and somehow Lokir could tell that he held her in the same standing as she held him.

"Bah," the soldier spat. "That's an elf name. My name's Ralof."

"Charming," Lokir muttered.

Rayla gave a snort, and glanced over at Lokir. Strangely, he thought she saw something similar to recognition flash in her eyes before Ralof began to speak again.

"You were trying to cross the border, right, _Rayla?_" he asked, putting extra emphasis on her name. She ignored him. "Walked right into that Imperial ambush. Same as us, and that thief over there."

It was with a surprised start that Lokir realized that Ralof was referring to him. For a moment, he thought of offering up his name, then decided against it. If he was going to be thrown in prison with these fools, he would rather that they didn't know who he was.

Prison. Gods, he would be going to prison with these war zealots just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time! How was that fair?

And so before he could stop himself, the words just began to spill out. "Damn you Stormcloaks," he spat. "Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn't been looking for you, I could've stolen that horse and be halfway to Hammerfell." He sent a pointed glare toward Ralof that he never would have had the courage to give the larger man under normal circumstances.

Ralof just gave him an amused look, though Rayla gave him another one of those looks, and Lokir wondered if he'd seen her somewhere before. After searching his memory for a brief moment, he knew that he hadn't. So why was she looking at him like that? It was a bit off-putting.

"Y—Rayla," he said. For a moment, he considered asking her _why she kept looking at him_, but decided against it. "You and me—we shouldn't be here. It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants."

Rayla stretched on the bench of the cart, looking as if she were perfectly content to be tied up in the back of a cart with criminals. That is, assuming she wasn't a criminal herself. "Yes, well…"

But she never finished, because the Imperial guard looked back at them with the whip for the horses in one hand.

"Shut up back there!" he shouted, then turned back to the horses.

Lokir wanted to bang his head against one of the cart's sides. He actually tried, but he wouldn't have been able to without flopping out of the cart and being run over by one of the soldiers on horses behind the cart. However, as he tried, he caught another glance at the fourth person in the cart.

He was clearly some type of noble, if his silk robes with fur linings were any indication. He had dark blonde hair, like Ralof, and he was bound just as tightly—if not more so. However, unlike the other prisoners, he had a dirty gag in his mouth that prohibited him from speaking.

"What's wrong with him?" Lokir found himself asking, nodding toward the noble. Perhaps he had been mixed up in the ambush, too.

Ralof's face immediately darkened. "Watch your tongue!" he barked. "You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King of Skyrim!"

Before Lokir could even begin to process a reaction to that, Rayla rolled her eyes dramatically and muttered, "Oh, please."

Ralof's indignant attitude snapped to her. "What, you don't think so, kinsman?"

Rayla scoffed, and Lokir could see her hands making fists under her bonds. "_Please_. Ulfric Stormcloak is a racist and a narcissist and not fit to be High King." She paid no mind to the fact that the man she was insulting was sitting right next to her.

Ralof growled out a curse and lurched in his seat like he was going to attack her, but stopped when the Imperial soldier driving the cart sent him a look, raising the whip. Beside Rayla (who looked far more comfortable than she had any right to be), Ulfric muttered many (probably unpleasant) things behind his gag.

Finally, Lokir's brain seemed to start working. _Ulfric Stormcloak,_ the leader of the rebellion, was in the cart with him. If they had such a prisoner, where were they going to take Lokir? His gut exploded in worry.

Rayla just rolled her neck and yawned. Did she not realize the gravity of the situation? Did she not value her own life? Was she completely and utterly _insane?_

The cart was silent for a few more minutes, during which Lokir's panic slowly but surely increased. He never should have tried to steal that horse! He should have just paid his fine and dealt with the consequences! Now he had no idea what was going to happen to him—he only knew that it would not be good.

Another Imperial soldier suddenly spoke as the carts reached a bend in the road. "General Tullius, sir. The headsman is waiting."

Oh, no.

Then the cart turned around the bend, and Lokir immediately knew where they were.

Helgen. The Imperial run town—one that was prone to executions.

_Execution._ For stealing a horse? How was that fair?

"Oh," Lokir whimpered, too soft for anyone but him to hear. He _really_ should have just paid that fine.

Even Rayla seemed to be disturbed by this revelation. As Lokir muttered a prayer to the Divines, she craned her neck and tried to look around the town as the cart pulled them in. Lokir had been to Helgen once or twice before, so he knew the tall, militaristic buildings fairly well. The entire town was surrounded by a fortified wall, and the keep tower rose high above the town. Lokir stared at it all with terror curdling through his heart. Of all places to be executed in, couldn't the Imperials have picked somewhere…a bit nicer?

"Look at him," Ralof bit out eventually, looking behind him as the cart passed through the gate. He stared at a middle-aged man on horseback, next to two elves—probably Thalmor—who were also on horseback. "General Tullius the Military Governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves. I bet they had something to do with this."

Rayla groaned to the sky. "By the Divines, we get it! You hate elves!" Then she turned around to the Imperial driving the cart and said, "Please just execute me now so that I don't have to listen to this idiocy anymore."

The Imperial guard said nothing. He probably thought that she was a Stormcloak soldier who was faking hate for her cause to try and get out of the execution. But this soldier couldn't see the hate on Rayla's face; she truly despised the men around her.

Lokir's anxiety only grew as the cart traversed the town, though it seemed to be only headed one place: a dead end, where a chopping block lay.

And even though he knew why they were stopping, he couldn't stop the words from spilling out of his mouth. "Why are we stopping."

Ralof rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Why do you think? End of the line." Then his voice took on a more somber tone. "Let's not keep the gods waiting."

The injustice of the whole situation slapped Lokir straight across the face.

"No!" he cried, twisting in his seat to shout at whoever would listen. "Wait! We're not rebels!"

Ralof scoffed. "Face your death with some courage, thief."

Lokir was in the grips of a full on panic. "You've got to tell them! We weren't with you!" Then, to the guards around them, "We weren't with them!"

Rayla's brow was furrowed when he looked back at her. He couldn't tell if she was upset with his behavior or the situation, but he decided that the second was a bit more pressing than however cowardly he acted.

Finally, the cart rocked to a stop. Next to them, the other Stormcloaks marched out of their carts with determined faces.

_We Nords are too prideful, _some part of Lokir's brain that wasn't freaking out thought.

"Everyone out," the Imperial soldier barked.

_This is not good, this is not good, this is _not _good!_ Lokir thought. He was so tense that when he was forced to stand, he nearly toppled over. He stumbled out of the cart, nearly falling face first onto the ground. He could hear the others coming down behind him, but it felt like he had shifted into a different plane of existence. He could only see the chopping block, just a few yards away.

"Proceed to the execution block when your name is called," the captain of the soldiers barked. It was clear she was trying to impress Tullius, who stood near the execution block.

Lokir was in a haze. This couldn't be happening. But it was! There had to be some way for him to get out of this—escape, perhaps?

"Hadvar, you may begin," the female captain told a man with brown hair in light Imperial armor. He stood in front of Lokir's group.

Hadvar nodded and looked down at a piece of parchment that he held in his hand. "Ulfric Stormcloak. Jarl of Windhelm."

The leader in question stepped forward, glaring daggers at everyone that he saw. The Imperial captain took his arm tightly and led him over to the line of future executionees herself. Meanwhile, Lokir's eyes were flicking all over the place, desperately trying to find a way to escape his fate. Ralof stood next to him, and Rayla was behind the Stormcloak.

"Ralof of Riverwood," Hadvar called, with no lack of malice in his voice.

Lokir didn't listen to what Ralof said. There! In the gap between the Captain and this "Hadvar." There was a space wide enough for him to run through, where he _might_ be able to run out of the whole keep. It was dangerous, but no less dangerous than stepping up to the chopping block.

His muscles were all tensed and ready to run as Ralof walked to the block. In a moment, once he got up the courage, he'd make his escape, and—

Then a voice sounded in his ear, close enough to make him jump in surprise.

"Don't do anything stupid," Rayla muttered, "Lokir of Rorikstead."

Lokir's eyes practically popped out of his head, and he nearly gave himself whiplash when he turned his neck to look at her. She looked smug, like she knew something—knew _him._

He'd never told her his name, and certainly not where he was from. So _how in the hell did she know who she was?_

He was so startled that he didn't even realize that his name had been called until the captain grabbed his arm in a steel grip and hauled him in line with the other prisoners.

He looked over his shoulder at Rayla, utter confusion smothering his fear for the moment. She was standing with a straight, undefeated posture as Hadvar looked at her and then down at the list.

"Who are you?" Hadvar asked Rayla, half-looking at her, half-looking at the list in his hands.

Rayla thrust her head back, and announced in a typical proud Nord voice, "I am Rayla of Morthal, daughter of Garrik and Ashera Adven."

"Those are elf names," Ralof spat under his breath. Lokir ignored him as Hadvar looked at Rayla, then his list, and then the Imperial captain.

"Captain?" he inquired, sounding almost as confused as Lokir felt. "Wh-what should we do? She's not on the list."

The captain looked at her, rolled her eyes behind her steel officer helmet, and said, "Forget the list! She goes to the block!"

Rayla's eyes darkened, but before she could do anything, the captain shoved her forward, and Rayla ended up right next to Lokir—perfectly in line for execution.

He should escaped when he had the chance.

General Tullius marched up to Ulfric and glared at the man. The hate there was unmistakable.

"Ulfric Stormcloak," he said. His voice was aged, but authoritative. Lokir didn't like it. "Some here in Helgen call you a hero. But a hero doesn't use a power like the Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne."

Lokir rolled his eyes. He'd heard the story of what happened so many times that it was branded into his brain. Personally, he couldn't care less about the civil war. Right now, he cared most about his chances of survival and how Rayla of Morthal knew him. But mostly that first one.

Ulfric said something, but his gag blocked any words he might have said. Lokir's eyes zeroed in on the chopping block, which was stained red from old executions. He only really paid attention when a strange sound rang through the countryside.

It sounded almost like a bear—though a bit more high-pitched and much, much louder. It was the strangest sound that Lokir had ever heard.

_What was that? _he wondered. When he looked around, he saw that everyone else (Stormcloaks and Imperials alike) looked just as mystified—though Rayla had gone as pale as a ghost.

"It's nothing," Tullius told the men around him. "Carry on."

The captain saluted rather dramatically. "Yes, General Tullius!" Then, to a priestess in orange robes standing next to the headsman, "Give then their last rites."

Lokir rolled his eyes as the priestess began in a lofty voice: "As we commend your souls to Aetherius, blessings of the Eight Divines upon you, for you are the salt and earth of Nirn, our beloved—"

"Oh, for the love of Talos," a red headed Stormcloak blurted out, sounding incredibly angry. "Shut up, and let's get this over with."

The priestess glared at him from under her hood. "As you wish."

Two soldiers grabbed the Stormcloak by the arms and forced him forward. Lokir suddenly felt sick.

"Come on, I haven't got all morning," the Stormcloak barked out, as he was set in front of the execution block.

Lokir couldn't believe it. How could this Nord be so flippant when it came to his own death?

"My ancestors are smiling at me, Imperials. Can you say the same?" the Stormcloak asked, as the captain shoved his head in place with her boot.

Lokir looked away as the headsman raised his crooked axe. A moment later, there was a sickening _schlock,_ and then a _thud_, along with the rush of liquid and the smell of blood.

He was going to vomit. They'd just chopped off a man's head, right in front of him. Even Tullius looked disgusted. When Lokir looked back, he saw the captain shove the Stormcloak's body to the side with her boot.

"You Imperial bastards!" another Stormcloak shouted.

"Justice!" a man watching responded.

"Death to the Stormcloaks!" a woman yelled.

"As fearless in death as he was in life," Ralof muttered.

Lokir sent a glare at Rayla for interrupting his plan of escape. In a few minutes, the headless body would be him.

"Next, the Nord in the rags!" the captain shouted.

There was a bit of confusion, seeing as there were technically _two_ Nords who were not wearing Stormcloak cuirasses. Ultimately, though, a soldier grabbed Rayla and shoved her forward, and Lokir was both relieved that it wasn't him and disgusted at his relief. Rayla was like him—innocent, at least when it came to this particular crime.

Rayla was not resistant to the men dragging her over to the block, but she did hold her chin up high and maintain her straight posture. As she was being walked to her death, that strange sound made it's reappearance, although louder this time. It made Lokir hudder and look around in fright. What could possibly be making that horrible sound? Even Rayla looked up at the sky in fright.

"There it is again!" Hadvar exclaimed.

"I said. Next. Prisoner." The captain did not seem happy with the interruptions.

The captain shoved Rayla into the same position that the Stormcloak soldier had been in before. Rayla grimaced as her neck hit the wet block.

Behind her, the executioner raised his axe.

Behind him, the clouds darkened.

Lokir had a very bad feeling about this.

Then the roar came for the third time, and Lokir felt his heart drop into his gut. Out of the clouds, a giant black _something_ descended, roaring with rage.

A dragon. A bloody dragon had just descended on the Helgen execution.

* * *

Rayla didn't know whether to pray in thanks or for deliverance. One minute her head was being pressed into a bloody execution block, and the next she was watching a dragon fly out of the sky as the executioner prepared to cut off her head.

"What in Oblivion is that?!" she heard Tullius exclaim.

And yet, the executioner was still raising his axe. What the hell was wrong with these people? Where were their priorities?

Then the dragon, which was as black as coal at midnight, opened its maw wide and roared even louder than before. The sound reverberated in Rayla's soul, making her shudder.

And the experience only got stranger. The sky seemed to rumble and shake, and then it turned a strange mixture of pink and orange. And then large chunks of rock started to fly down to the ground, making the whole earth shake.

Rayla's head rattled against the executioner's block, and by the time she regained her senses, everything had gone to hell.

Meteors were raining down all around her, and the scent of blood and death was thick in the air. She'd been knocked out of the chopping block, and the bottom part of her tunic was drenched in the Stormcloak soldier's blood. Her head was pounding, and when she looked up at Helgen, the pain only increased. In a matter of moments, the dragon had managed to decimate Helgen's buildings.

This wasn't what she thought dragons would be like.

Above the shouting, she heard a voice. "Come on, horse thief! Get up! The gods won't give us another chance!"

Rayla looked up to find the obnoxious Stormcloak Ralof helping Lokir to his feet, completely ignoring her a few feet away.

_Fine,_ she thought. _Like I need their help_.

She crawled over to the headsman's body, gagged at the strong stench of blood, and did her best to turn his axe over on its side. Looking up at the sky and hearing the dragon roar again, she rubbed her bonds as quickly as she could over the blade.

_Snap! _The blade cut through the rope in no time. Rayla staggered to her feet, grateful for the use of both hands to help her stand, and dashed off after Lokir and Ralof, who she'd seen run into one of the stone towers.

She had to jump over several bodies—Stormcloak, Imperial, and villagers alike—to get to the large, flaming-moss covered building, and she very narrowly made it inside (her guess was that the Stormcloaks had tried to close it on her).

For a moment, her world was filled with panting and fear as she placed her hands on her knees and wheezed. Outside, more terrible roars filled the air.

The inside of the tower was filled with Stormcloak soldiers, along with Lokir, the only one other than Rayla who wasn't wearing a rebel's cuirass. Even Ulfric Stormcloak was there, his gag freshly removed. All of the Stormcloaks were glaring at Rayla.

Then someone shoved her, and she stumbled backward. She caught her balance and glared at her aggressor—none other than the Stormcloak with the best personality. Ralof.

"What is _she _doing here?" Ralof demanded. He spat at her feet. "Race-traitor."

"There is a literal _dragon_ outside this tower right now," Lokir panted, wiping his long brown hair out of his face, "and you want to talk about _politics?_"

Rayla had to restrain a chuckle. She knew she'd saved the thief for a reason. Well, other than what had brought her to Helgen in the first place.

Before she could dwell on that though any further, a massive _BOOM_ shook the tower, making everyone stumble. Since Lokir was still bound up by rope, he actually fell over onto the floor, because he didn't have the use of his hands to balance himself.

_Oh, for the love of Talos,_ Rayla thought as she rushed over and helped the man stand. He nodded in thanks, as Ulfric Stormcloak began to yell.

"We need to move!" he exclaimed in a low, thickly accented voice. "Now!"

"Up through the tower, let's go!" Ralof yelled, running up the steps after another Stormcloak soldier.

Rayla and Lokir were the first ones to follow him, both scrambling up the stairs rather clumsily. Ralof glanced back once as they ran, and scowled. Rayla couldn't have cared less. She was too focused on surviving.

Then disaster struck. Right as the first Stormcloak reached the top of the stairs, the wall exploded as the black dragon returned. The man went flying, along with the rubble, and Rayla was nearly thrown back down the stairs as the dragon opened its mouth and _spoke._

"_YOL…TOOR SHUL!"_

Fire exploded from its throat, turning the air into lava and forcing everyone to run backwards to avoid being roasted alive. Lokir bumped into Rayla, nearly sending them both hurtling back down the stairs.

Then the strangest thing happened. The black dragon looked into the tower. Red eyes scanned the interior, but when they reached Rayla, the beast froze. For a split second, she thought she could feel its eyes staring into her very soul.

Then the dragon roared one last time and launched off from the tower, only to launch fire at the Imperials below them. Rayla let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

"This is crazy," she heard Lokir mutter behind her. "This is absolutely _insane_."

Rayla had to agree. This is not what she had expected from her visit to Helgen.

Ralof was staring through the massive hole in the stone wall, down at a building below them. Part of the roof had caved in, and the other part was on fire. Rayla immediately knew what the crazy Stormcloak was thinking, and as much as she didn't like the idea, she had to admit that it was the only plan they had to get out of the blasted town.

"Jump through the roof and keep going!" Ralof told them (well, it was more like he was speaking to Lokir).

Lokir stepped up to the edge of the hole and looked down at the roof and blanched. "No way. That's suicide!"

Rayla stepped up behind him. "Yeah, well, so is staying here with a dragon on the loose. Down you go!"

And then she shoved him as hard as she could, and he plummeted down to the inn, screaming the whole time.

"Sorry!" Rayla yelled down after him. Then she turned to Ralof, sent him an offensive gesture, and said, "It's been a pleasure."

Then she looked down at the inn, said a quick prayer to whatever Divines were listening, and jumped.

For a single heartbeat, she could hear wind rushing around her, the roar of the dragon in the distance, and her own exhilarated scream. Then the floor of the inn rushed up to meet her, and she hit it with a harsh _thud_ and a flash of pain in her shoulder.

"You are absolutely _out of your mind!"_ Lokir exclaimed, struggling to stand with his hands bound. He had a small cut on his forehead, but other than that he looked fine.

"You're alive, aren't you?" Rayla said, grabbing the back of his rough-spun shirt and hauling him to his feet. Overhead, the dragon roared again, and someone screamed in pain. Rayla cursed. "Come on!" she told the thief beside her. "We have to get out of here!"

"Oh, _really?_" Lokir called from behind her as she moved past him. "I thought we might stay for a while, have a nice _picnic!_"

Rayla sent a glare back at him as she reached the edge of the second floor of the inn. They'd have to jump down one more time. "Don't make me push you again."

Lokir looked torn between glaring at her and cowering away. Rayla rolled her eyes and jumped down to the first floor of the inn. A moment later, Lokir followed, landing clumsily. The dragon swooped overhead, and all that Rayla could smell was smoke.

Together, Lokir and Rayla ran out of the destroyed inn, only to see more destruction and blood awaiting them. The many houses that they had seen on the way in were completely decimated, turned into burning piles of wood and stone.

"Haming, you need to get over here!" Hadvar, the soldier from before, yelled at a small boy. "Now!"

The boy ran over, and Rayla instantly decided that Hadvar was not a bad man even as she and Lokir ran near him.

Somehow, Rayla knew that it wouldn't be a smart idea to run past a man who was wielding a sword without warning, so she shouted, "Hey!"

Hadvar spun, and she barely dodged a sword to the face. The man seemed surprised to see them—and frankly, she was surprised to see him. Most Imperial soldiers, from the bodies that she could see on the ground, were already dead.

"Prisoners?" he asked, looking at her, and then at Lokir behind her. Then Hadvar seemed to come to his senses. "Well, stay with me if you want to live."

Seeing as he was the only one around with a sword, that was exactly Rayla's plan, and when she looked back at Lokir and saw how much blood had drained from his face, she could see that that was his intention as well.

Hadvar suddenly cursed as the dragon swooped overhead, and the three were forced to retreat as the creature blasted more fire out through its mouth, completely incinerating one man who was injured on the ground.

"Father!" the young boy Hadvar had saved exclaimed. He was held back by an older man in iron armor.

Rayla had to swallow the sudden urge to vomit. Couldn't anyone do _anything _to stop this monster?

The answer was a clear and definite _no_. She could see the surviving soldiers shooting as many arrows as they could at the monster, but none of the projectiles even made a dent in the beast's armor. The only chance they had of survival was to somehow make it out of the keep.

"Gunnar, take care of the boy," Hadvar told the old man, snapping Rayla's attention back to the presence. "I have to find General Tullius and join the defense."

"_Defense?"_ Lokir demanded incredulously. He gestured at the sky wildly with his bound hands, wincing at the sound of the dragon's roar. "There _is_ no defense against that thing!"

Hadvar looked at the sky, and then at him. "I have to try."

Then he ran off, and Rayla had no choice but to follow him. She heard Lokir curse and then follow her.

They dashed past the incinerated man as the dragon swooped overhead, and Rayla was so full of an equal mixture of adrenaline and fear that she could feel her fingers shaking. In all of her days, she had never seen anything like this. Gods, how she wished she had a weapon! She should have at least taken the headsman's axe!

"Stay close to the wall!" Hadvar suddenly instructed them as they jumped down two feet into an alleyway between a half-burned alleyway and one of the fortified walls that was partially crumbled.

Lokir reacted before Rayla did, and shoved her against the wall right as the black dragon flew overhead. Then it swooped back around and _landed on the wall right above them._

Rayla froze. The black dragon's razor-sharp, foot long claws were less than six inches from her face. She was afraid that if she even breathed, those claws would slice into her face. She didn't even want to know how that would turn out. But being this close to a murderous beast also allowed her to get her first, clear look at the creature.

Its wings were made of the same material as a bat's, though much thicker, to support the dragon's copious weight. Large, thick scales coated its skin—no wonder the arrows couldn't get in. That had to be the best armor in the whole world!

Rayla was snapped out of her observations when she heard the creature speak again—almost as if it were shouting something.

"_YOL…TOOR SHUL!"_

Fire burst forth as the creature spoke in a terrible voice. Strangely, Rayla felt something about the spoken words resonate within her as the dragon spoke them. It felt rather like a bell had been rung inside her, loud and clear. She just wished she knew what that was supposed to mean.

Then, for the millionth time that day, disaster struck again. The creature took flight once more, but its claws slashed backward as the dragon did, and Rayla felt white-hot pain fill her face, like she had been deeply burned.

Her head snapped backward, slammed into the stone wall, and she saw and felt no more.

* * *

**Yeah, so this ending is rather abrupt, and I realize that many of you are like me and have played this opening sequence so many times that you know every word. I tried to change things, so hopefully it is a bit more interesting. But congrats if you made it this far! I promise, there will be some more OC in chapters to come. If you want to read them.**


	2. Chapter 2

When Rayla awoke, she was cold and clammy and in a fair amount of pain. But that was something she was used to. Well, the pain part, at least.

She tried to open her eyes, but found that her eyelids had been crusted shut. So she tried to sit up, but somebody grabbed her shoulders and set her back down.

"Easy, there," a male voice with a thick accent said. "You took a dragon claw directly to the face."

Dragon?

The memories of the past few hours came crashing back into her mind, along with a fresh wave of pain. Rayla groaned as Hadvar set her back down.

"Lokir," his voice asked. "Did you find any water?"

"Right here," the thief's voice responded. Rayla heard the slosh of liquid and then felt something wet on her face as a towel wiped over her eyes.

Then came pain that would have been blinding if her eyes had been open. It felt like fresh fire burst across her face, and over her shouts of agony, she could hear Hadvar and Lokir both cursing.

Once the pain had faded to a dull throb, Rayla heard Hadvar say, "Blast, Lokir! You moved the bandage!"

"Sorry!"

Then Rayla opened her eyes, and before she even took in her surroundings, she looked over at where she had heard Lokir's voice and said, "Horse thief, you're dead meat."

Lokir laughed nervously. His ragged clothes were covered in soot and blood, and the ends of his long brown hair were singed. He was rather scrawny, and his face was so covered in dirt that she had a hard time telling what his features actually looked like. All she could really see of his face was two brown eyes staring back at her with a bit of fear and curiosity. Yes, this was definitely the Lokir of Rorikstead she had been sent to find.

Slowly, Rayla sat up, blinking away the water droplets left in her eyelashes. There was still pain, but it was manageable. It wasn't her first wound, though it was the first across her face. What a stupid mistake to make.

She raised a grimy hand to touch the bandage across her face and winced as more pain was wrought. She could see out of both eyes, but her left eye was slightly hindered by the bandage when she attempted to look to the right. Wonderful.

Blasted dragons.

She cracked her neck as she looked around at the room they were in. It appeared to be some kind of barracks, with beds all around—though all of them were broken. A few rusty iron swords hung on weapons racks, and the place stank of old sweat and the smoke from outside. The door leading out had been barricaded with some of the broken beds, but there was a gate that led deeper into the keep at the other end of the room.

Rayla scratched at the part of her face not wrapped in the bandage. It reached diagonally across her face, starting from the right side of her chin and reaching up to the left side of her forehead. It was definitely going to leave a mark. "Where are we? How did we get here?"

"Helgen's keep," Hadvar responded. He started to say something else, but it was drowned out by the roar of the dragon overhead. Rayla felt her left eye twitch.

"We need to get moving," she said, attempting to struggle to her feet. Immediately, Hadvar and Lokir were both at her side, but she shoved them away from her. "Let me get up by myself!"

Both men let her go, and she muttered a few curses as she struggled to her feet, feeling the slightest bit dizzy. Stupid dragon.

Lokir and Hadvar were both staring at her. She gave them both an offensive gesture and turned around to one of the weapon racks to pick up a rusty iron sword. "Are you both going to stand there or are we going to get out of here?"

Hadvar and Lokir shared a look that she didn't much care for. Rayla ignored them and started looking around the room for any sort of supplies. The shirt that the Imperials had forced her into was itchy and scratchy and felt like it was made from a frostbite spider's hairs.

She looked through one chest and found two septims and a lump of leather, but nothing else. She heard the other two men shuffling around behind her, and sighed. Slim pickings when you're the survivor of a massacre. She briefly wondered who else could have made it, but then Lokir exclaimed, "I found something!"

She turned to find Lokir holding up a slightly dusty cuirass of Imperial armor, along with some boots and arm guards.

"Good job," Hadvar congratulated him. "But is there anything else?"

Rayla shook her head as she carried the iron sword over to peer at the subpar armor. "No, I already checked. There's only enough for one of us."

She was about to suggest that Lokir take the armor, since he didn't seem like much of a fighter and would need all the help he could get, but then the thief surprised her.

"You take it," he told her, holding out the armor. "I don't even know how to put this thing on."

Rayla narrowed her eyes at him. While she may have been sent to get him, that didn't necessarily mean that she had to trust him. She'd seen how he'd behaved so far; what was behind his actions now?

When she couldn't come up with an answer right away, she shrugged and took the armor from him. Luckily, it was the kind that she could just buckle over her clothes so she wouldn't have to change in front of these men. That would be rather awkward.

"Thanks," she told Lokir, strapping on the arm bracers.

He nodded at her, then turned around and continued to search the room. After a moment, he sighed.

"Don't any of you Imperial soldiers keep daggers or knives around?" he asked Hadvar. "I'm no good with a sword."

Hadvar raised an eyebrow. "A dagger won't stop a Stormcloak that's charging at you—or a dragon."

"But they are rather good for getting in close and cutting the other person's throat before they know what's happening," Rayla added, nodding at Lokir. She had a grim sort of respect for daggers, though she much preferred swords.

Nonetheless, she pulled the Imperial armor over her head, checked the buckles, and crossed the room to where several iron swords waited. She picked the least rustiest one and tossed it to Lokir. He caught it clumsily.

"If anything happens," she added, pulling on the leather boots that were a bit too big for her feet, "You'll be glad to have some kind of weapon over your fists."

Lokir blanched at that statement.

"Well," he said, staring at the sword in his hand as if it were a snake, "Let's not waste any more time, then."

* * *

Lokir hated everything about Helgen's keep.

It was dark, and musty, and it shook every single time that the dragon from _hell_ flew overhead. Oh, and it was also very cramped and confined, and it made him feel like a rap in a trap.

Yet Hadvar and Rayla both seemed incredibly comfortable with their surroundings. Hadvar was understandable—he'd probably been in the keep, or something like it, multiple times. But Rayla literally had a bandage _from a dragon_ across her face, was wearing rusty armor over uncomfortable clothes, and had formerly been unconscious for over twenty minutes. She should be the one uncomfortable here, not Lokir.

_Stop it, you idiot,_ some rational part of his brain told him. _You need to focus on survival, not on how cowardly this woman makes you feel._

He really hated his brain sometimes.

Lokir shook his head to help clear up his thoughts and hurried after the two warriors. They'd been walking for several minutes, so something—

"There!" Hadvar said, pointing to something at the end of the hallway.

It was another gate. Lokir should have known better than to hope for a way out after such a limited time traveling. Hadvar started to walk toward it, but Lokir stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Stop!" he whispered. "Listen!"

Hadvar and Rayla both froze, right as the men on the other side of the gate began to speak.

"We need to get moving!" one of them said. "That dragon is tearing up the whole keep!"

"Just…give me a minute," the other said. "I'm out of breath."

"Stormcloaks," Lokir whispered. "Maybe…maybe we can reason with them?" He felt sick at the idea of using his sword on another person.

"Maybe," Rayla agreed, though she didn't look too sure. Although, it was rather hard to tell with the red bandage across her face.

"We won't know until we open the gate," Hadvar said.

Lokir swallowed and nodded as the two strode forward to do just that. From what he had seen of the Stormcloaks so far, he wasn't very confident.

Hadvar pulled down on the lever to open the gate, and as Lokir squinted into the room beyond, he saw two Stormcloak soldiers scramble for their weapons as they realized that they were not alone.

"Easy," Rayla told them, holding up her hands as she stepped up to the opening gate. "We just want to—"

But as soon as the gate was fully down, the Stormcloaks rushed forward. Lokir watched in horror as Rayla barely managed to dodge the iron war axe of one soldier as the other ran into the hallway with his greatsword. Because Lokir was in clear sight of the soldier, he surged straight for him.

Lokir yelped in fright and scrambled backward, but luckily Hadvar intercepted the Stormcloak before he could do any damage to Lokir. In a few swift sword strokes, both of the rebels were lying on the ground, and the smell of blood was once again pungent in Lokir's nose. He wanted to vomit.

"Blast," Rayla said, cleaning her iron sword on the back of her pants leg. "I wish these people would listen to reason."

Now, that was interesting. Lokir thought she hated Stormcloaks?

Rayla caught Lokir's confused look and sent him one in return. He wiped the expression off his face and covered his nose as he stepped over the bodies of the rebels.

The room they stepped into was considerably nicer than the barracks. Colorful rugs lined the circular room, and a small square table sat on the other side of another gate.

"What is it with you people and gates?" Lokir asked Hadvar as he stepped into the room.

"He has a point," Rayla ageed, sheathing her sword.

Hadvar ignored them as he pulled the lever for the second gate. Outside the keep, the dragon made another pass, and Lokir flinched. They _had _to get out of there.

"This way," Hadvar said, stepping into another hallway. "It's not far."

Lokir rather doubted that, but he kept his mouth shut and adjusted his sweaty grip on his sword as he followed the soldier. It was a miracle that the dragon hadn't figured out how to collapse the whole keep on top of them and bury the survivors alive.

The hallway they entered was covered in moss, but at least it had steps leading downward. The further underground they were, the further they were from the monstrosity that he had no doubt was circling the keep at that very moment.

Of course, the moment they reached the bottom of the steps, Lokir's bad luck struck again. The next hallway that they had entered was significantly wider, but darker. He could barely make out two figures at the end of the hallway before it happened. The dragon roared once more, and there was a terrible rumble overhead. All three survivors stumbled backward as the ceiling in the hallway collapsed, and dust filled the hallway. When it cleared, the way through was blocked by a heavy pile of rubble.

Lokir coughed to clear out his throat and cursed at the same time as Rayla. He looked at her curiously. That same confusion threatened to make a reappearance as he remembered how she seemed to know who he was, but he quickly stifled it. They needed to focus on survival, and the fact that their only apparent way out had just been blocked.

"Wait a minute," Hadvar said, moving one large block of stone out of the way. He coughed as he kicked up more dust, but he managed to uncover a large wooden door to the left. He turned back to Lokir and Rayla and grinned.

When they stepped through the door, coughing from all the dust, they found three very surprised Stormcloak soldiers staring back at them. That only lasted for about a moment before all three drew their swords and charged.

Lokir cursed and ducked to the side as Rayla and Hadvar lifted their own weapons and clashed with the rebels. They'd entered some kind of storeroom, so Lokir felt rather stupid when he tripped over a plucked pheasant on the ground. He plowed into the floor face-first, and felt his lip bust open.

He groaned and rolled over, feeling blood drip down his chin. When he opened his eyes, he found one of the Stormcloaks bearing down on him.

"Talos," Lokir cursed.

He rolled to the side right as the Stormcloak swung down with their war axe. Lokir barely managed to get out of the way, and felt the axe scrape past the side of his head as the axe slammed into the floor where his head had formerly been. He scrambled backwards on all fours and backed into a shelf. At some point, the sword he'd been holding had slid across the floor, out of his reach.

The Stormcloak stepped forward with his axe raised, and Lokir's hands searched behind him for some sort of pan, or bottle, or _anything _to use as a weapon, but the only thing he could find was a head of cabbage.

The Stormcloak sneered cruelly at Lokir as the rebel raised his axe, but the look quickly turned to one of confusion as the cabbage slammed into his face.

Lokir gulped as the Stormcloak scowled and took one more step forward—before a the end of a sword suddenly sprouted from his chest.

Lokir scrambled to his feet as Rayla kicked the Stormcloak off her sword and tutted in disgust as blood spurted onto her armor. Lokir grimaced and looked away, feeling the side of his head that the axe had brushed.

He frowned and felt the side of his head with both hands just to be sure. He was unharmed, but the rebel had managed to cut off all the hair on the left side of his head! Lokir looked down at the ground and found several locks of his brown hair on the ground.

Rayla snorted and sheathed her sword. "That's two you owe me now, Close-Shave."

Lokir's eyes twitched in annoyance as she turned around to search the room. Why did she keep saving his life? He didn't know her, but she clearly knew him. None of the people who _actually_ knew him would risk their necks for him like this stranger had done and was still in the act of doing. So why was she doing it?

_Well, _he thought, _I guess I'll just have to wait to find out._

* * *

**Okay, the last Helgen chapter is the third chapter. The fourth chapter is going to be better (hopefully less boring), I promise. **


	3. Chapter 3

After they scavenged the storage room for potions, they had to climb over several other pieces of rubble on the other side of the second entrance to the room to get to another hallway.

"How big _is _this place?" Lokir asked, feeling the side of his head where the hair was shaved short. Blasted Stormcloaks.

"Big," Hadvar replied in his accented voice. "I don't think I've even been through all of it."

Rayla narrowed her eyes at him from between the bandage across her face. They'd tried to get her to drink one of the healing potions they'd found, but she refused, saying that such a small bottle wouldn't heal a big wound, and that they should save it for later. "And yet you're guiding us through this place?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Not really," she admitted. "Please, continue."

Hadvar rolled his eyes and led them down a steep incline. Lokir felt his frustration. Being trapped with an Imperial soldier and am injured warrior while a dragon flew around outside wasn't exactly on his top ten list of things to do, but they had little choice. For now, they were all stuck with each other.

Hadvar stopped suddenly, looking conflicted.

"What is it?" Rayla asked, hand on her sword.

"I think we're nearing the torture room," he replied. "Gods, I wish we didn't need these."

Lokir reluctantly strained his ears, listening for the tell-tale signs of a man being tortured. For a moment, he heard nothing. Then he heard a man cry out in pain, the sound echoing up to where the three stood frozen.

Rayla and Hadvar both started running, and Lokir hesitantly sprinted after them. He'd accidentally left his borrowed sword in the storage room. It wasn't like he knew how to use it, but Rayla was right. He'd rather have that than nothing at all.

When they reached the torture room at the bottom of the stairs, there was a surprise waiting for them. Nobody was currently being tortured, but there were three more Stormcloaks attacking two Imperials, whom Lokir assumed were the torturers. The room was already covered in blood, and three cages stood against the farthest wall. One corner of the room held a caged-off counter.

Lokir prepared to step back and let Rayla and Hadvar run forward to help the Imperials, but only Hadvar drew his sword. Confused once more, Lokir looked at Rayla, only to find her green eyes staring intensely at the mutilated body of a Stormcloak on the floor. The man had no fingernails, and one of his eyes had been…Lokir didn't even know how to describe it. Blood fanned out from the dead rebel like the sinister wings of an angel.

He looked back at Rayla to see her look at the tortured Stormcloak, then at the torturers, before taking her hand off of her sword.

This time, Lokir did vomit. He rushed to the corner of the room and hurled the contents of his meager breakfast onto the stones, trying his best to get out the sickness that he suddenly felt. When he turned back to the chaos, wiping his mouth, the two torturers were dead, but so were all of the Stormcloaks.

Hadvar sighed as he flicked the blood off his sword. "I can't believe these people called themselves Imperials."

Rayla said nothing, but as Lokir tried to wipe some of the bile from his shirt, he saw that she seemed very agitated as she stepped over the body of the torturer in the hood. As an added insult to the dead man, she reached down and tore his hood off of his armor, tying it around her own neck with a wince as the leather brushed her facial bandage. When she pulled the hood up, her bandage wasn't even visible—no doubt that had been her intent.

Lokir groaned in disgust as he wiped his hands off on his pants and stepped over the bodies in the room. In doing so, he stumbled into the wooden table near one of the pillars holding up the ceiling and knocked a book and a dagger to the floor.

Grinning, Lokir picked up the steel dagger and hooked it into his belt, glad to finally have a weapon that he was comfortable using. Curiously, he looked at the black book that had fallen to the floor, titled, _The Book of the Dragonborn_. Of course, because he was a Nord who had grown up with stories of the Dragonborn—and there was currently a dragon flying around the keep he was taking shelter in—he snatched the book off the ground and placed it in a satchel that he hadn't knocked off the table. As he did, he noticed the jingle of metal at the bottom of the bag. Feeling a flash of hope, Lokir dug around in the bottom of the satchel, only to find four lockpicks.

His grin widened. Lockpicks were as common as copper but as precious as gold to thieves like him. These would come in handy.

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, Rayla said, "Hey, I think this guy is still alive!"

Lokir spun to find her staring at one of the metal cages. Quickly, he stepped over the bodies to join her, and was shocked by what he saw. A man was lying on his back in the cage, unconscious. However, his chest was rising and falling, albeit weakly. His hands were closed around a book with some kind of spell symbol on it, and he was dressed in the cotton robes of a mage.

"Did either of you find anything to break the lock?" Rayla asked, turning to look at Hadvar.

Lokir was already on the move, delving into his newfound satchel to grab a lockpick and holding the steel dagger in his other hand. He may have been a thief, but he wasn't the type of man to leave another for dead. Especially not after what the torturer had done to the Stormcloak on the other side of the room.

Luckily, the lock wasn't terribly difficult—it was a wonder that this meager thing could keep any prisoners in at all. A few moments later, the lock opened with a quiet _snick_, and the cage door swung open.

When he stepped into the cage, he was surprised by the absence of the smell of blood. In fact, the cage was probably the cleanest smelling part of the dungeon. Below him, the slumbering mage gave no indication that he was going to wake up. His breathing had become even more faint, so much so that Lokir wasn't even sure if the man was breathing at all.

"Is he alive?" Rayla asked from outside the cage.

Lokir leaned down by the mage and pressed two fingers against the man's neck. The mage's skin was cold and clammy. Perhaps he wasn't feeling for the pulse correctly enough, because he couldn't feel anything at all on the mage's skin.

Suddenly, the body of the mage jerked upward, and Lokir yelped and scrambled backwards as the mage sat up, eyes glowing a deep, dark blue. The book he had been holding hit the metal floor with a _thud._

"Necromancer!" Hadvar exclaimed, drawing his sword.

The mage looked straight at Hadvar, then shook his head. "No," he said.

His voice was deep and sounded unnatural, but for some reason Lokir didn't find it menacing. Maybe he had hit his head against the bars, but he didn't feel threatened by this mage all. Perhaps it was just because the accused necromancer was just…sitting there.

"Lokir," Rayla said, her voice dripping with caution, "Why don't you get out of the cage now?"

The mage looked at her, cocked his head, and said in a monotone voice, "Last born."

Rayla frowned. "Urm…okay?"

Lokir started to move, but his foot scraped the spell tome on the floor, and the attention of the mage turned to him.

"Nocturnal," the mage said. "Akatosh. Take my robes."

"Uh…" Lokir said, slowly backing away. "I think that I'm going to have to pa—"

"Take my robes," the mage repeated, a bit more emphatically.

Then he turned into dust.

It was very sudden. One moment he was a man with creepy glowing eyes, and the next he was crumbling into ash on the floor. Lokir cursed and jumped backwards to avoid breathing in the dead mage.

They all stared at the pile for a full minute before anyone said anything.

"Well," Hadvar eventually said. "That was interesting."

"_Interesting?"_ Rayla demanded. "He just collapsed into dust after he _died!"_

The keep shook again as the dragon flew overhead. Lokir ducked out of instinct, though nothing rained from the ceiling.

"If we're not careful," he said, "it'll be us who turns to dust next."

Rayla and Hadvar nodded and sheathed their weapons.

"We'd better get moving, then," Rayla said, looking shaken as she walked toward the tunnel entrance on the other side of the room.

Hadvar followed her, but Lokir hesitated for a moment, looking down at the now empty robes of the mage. Whatever had just happened, it felt significant. He couldn't just leave these things here.

Quickly, and with as much respect as he could muster, Lokir shook out the mage's robes and stuffed them inside his satchel. After a moment's hesitation, he stuffed the mage's spell tome in there as well. What was the worst that could happen? It didn't seem right to just _leave_ it there, and if the mage's stuff turned out to be trouble, Lokir could just sell it off.

Oh, yes. He rather liked that idea. As he stood and slung the satchel across his back, Lokir couldn't help but grin as he pictured the coin that a spell tome would bring.

After all, he was still a thief.


	4. Chapter 4

**In response to brodylopa's review (thanks!): Yes (without spoiling too much), there will be quite a bit of character development—hopefully for both Rayla and Lokir.**

**Sorry, this chapter is a bit heavy on non-OC. Chapter five picks up (and this time I mean it!).**

* * *

When they finally emerged from under Helgen's keep, covered in dirt, sweat, and bruises, Rayla was ready to nap for a week. Her face was aching, her feet were covered in blisters, and she was sure she smelled like the bear that had just tackled her a few minutes ago. Lokir and Hadvar were both in similar shapes, although Lokir's condition was by far the most amusing. He still had half of his hair missing, and whenever he he turned too fast, the hair that was left would slap him in the face.

The moment Rayla took a deep, clear breath of mountain air, Lokir grabbed her and Hadvar and pulled them down behind a rock by their armor. It wasn't a moment too soon, because the giant black dragon suddenly swooped overhead, roaring one final time before flying out of sight.

Gods, Rayla really hated that dragon. But at least now it was over. She hoped.

"Is it gone?" Lokir asked, squinting into the horizon.

"Hopefully for good this time," Hadvar said, cracking his neck and standing. Rayla followed suit, carefully adjusting the hood she had stolen from the torturer to cover her face.

She would give anything for a bath. And a change of clothes. And some food. And a healing potion that could stop the blasted throbbing in her face.

"Ugh," she grunted, sitting on the rock that they had just hidden behind. "Is there any sort of settlement nearby?"

Hadvar nodded, shaking a few pebbles out of his boot. "Closest town from here is Riverwood. My uncle's the blacksmith there. We can—"

"Sold," Rayla said, at the same time that Lokir said, "Let's go."

Hadvar's eyebrows crept into his eyebrows at their quick responses, but he said nothing. Rayla could sense that this man probably wanted rest as well.

And with that, the grand quest for food and shelter began.

* * *

Riverwood was a smaller town than Rayla was used to, but when she first saw it, it felt like she was walking right into Sovngarde itself. She could see a sawmill nearby, and welcomed the smell of freshly wood that came with it. It sort of reminded her of her childhood home.

Hadvar led them directly to the blacksmithery, waving occasionally at certain villagers. Rayla did her best to keep her face down. If anyone here saw her bandage, they would start asking questions that she didn't particularly want to answer at the moment.

"Uncle Alvor!" Hadvar called to a man in a black apron, attending the forge.

The man looked up, and Rayla could instantly see the resemblance. Alvor and Hadvar shared the same nose and the same jaw, though their eyes were clearly different.

"Hadvar?" Alvor asked, looking confused. He took one look at his nephew's appearance and his expression took on a more worried tone. "Shor's bones! What happened to you, boy?"

Rayla snorted. Hadvar could hardly be considered a "boy." He was several years older than her, and she was twenty-four.

"Uncle!" Hadvar hissed. "Keep your voice down! We should go inside to talk."

"Who's this?" Alvor asked, looking around Hadvar to stare at Rayla. She waved awkwardly at him.

"They're my friends," Hadvar replied. "They saved my life, in face. But _uncle,_ we should _really_ go inside."

Alvor pinched the bridge of his nose as if he had just received a headache, then sighed. "Alright, alright. Come inside. Sigrid will get you all something to eat."

_Finally_, Rayla thought, so focused on the thought of food that she barely remembered following Hadvar or his uncle and sitting down at a long kitchen table. Later, she wouldn't even remember what the inside of the house looked like.

"Sigrid!" Alvor shouted toward a set of steps that led downward. "We have company!"

Rayla craned her neck to look (for she was sitting at the end of the table, and therefore closest to the stairs) as a middle-aged woman climbed the steps, wearing a simple red dress.

"Hadvar!" the woman said, catching sight of the soldier sitting at the table. "We've been so worried about you! We were just about to eat dinner, why don't you dig—who's this?"

Rayla shifted uncomfortably as Sigrid looked at her suspiciously. Rayla knew that most Nord women, once they were married, were fiercely protective of their husbands. While her intentions were far from anything in _that_ area, she understood Sigrid's sudden suspicion.

"My name is Rayla," she said. "I'm a friend of Hadvar's."

"Why don't you take off the hood?" Hadvar whispered, nodding at the piece of leather shadowing her face.

Rayla winced preemptively. She knew that wearing a hood inside was rude, but she knew that seeing a woman with a bandage across her face was even more off-putting. Still, she wanted to put Sigrid's suspicions aside, and when the woman saw Rayla with a bandaged face, her threatened feeling would ease. Hopefully.

So carefully, and with no small amount of pain and discomfort, Rayla lowered her hood, revealing the bloody bandage that stretched across her face. Immediately, she heard Alvor gag but try to cover it up with a cough.

Sigrid instantly became much more sympathetic. "Oh, you poor thing!" she cried. Then, to her husband, "Alvor, why don't you find the potion we keep for emergencies?"

Alvor stood a little bit too eagerly for Rayla's taste. She felt a flash of insecurity for the bandage on her face and then dismissed it. She had plenty of scars and old wounds. What was one more, even if it was across her face? If nothing else, it would make the bards at every inn she'd visited so far stop hitting on her.

She smiled a bit at that thought as Alvor crossed the room and began rummaging through a large cabinet. After a moment, he withdrew a large bottle full of red liquid. Rayla had enough experience with healing potions to know that, for categorical purposes, alchemists put stronger potions in larger bottles. The one that Alvor was placing on the table for her should be able to do the trick and make her face stop throbbing with every annoying beat of her heart.

"Thank you," Rayla said, grabbing the potion with both hands. As Alvor began to speak again, she worked on popping the cork of the bottle.

"What's the big mystery?" the man asked his nephew. "Why do you look like you lost an argument with a cave bear?"

Hadvar sighed. "Well, I was assigned to General Tullius's guard."

_Pop!_ The cork of the health potion came out with a rather loud noise, and Rayla smiled sheepishly when the family members stared at her for a moment. She hesitated as she stared down at her potion. Having been in her fair share of trouble before, she knew that the best and fastest way to experience a healing potions effects was to chug it as fast as she could. She lifted it to her lips as Hadvar spoke.

"We were stopped in Helgen," he said. "When we were attacked. By a _dragon_."

It was hard not to chuckle at Alvor and Sigrid's shock as she attempted to swallow the health potion. After her first swig, she could feel the pain begin to dissipate. By the time the aunt and uncle had recovered from their shock, she had finished the whole bottle. Gently, she placed it on the table and sighed in relief as she felt her wound knitting itself shut behind her bandage.

"A…dragon," Alvor said, sounding suspicious. "You're not drunk, are you, boy?"

Sigrid smacked her husband in the back of the head. "Let him tell his story."

Rayla snorted as she reached behind her head to try and unknot her bandage. She felt no pain in her face as she worked on it, which she took as a good sign.

"The dragon wrecked the place," she said, drawing their attention to her. She figured that they hadn't expected her to speak much. She cleared her throat and said, "A lot of people died."

And finally, the bandage came undone. She groaned in disgust as she felt the congealed blood from the wrapping come off on her face, and the cloth fell into her lap with a soft squishing sound. She heard Alvor gag again and rolled her eyes.

"Here," Sigrid said, handing Rayla a towel from near the fireplace.

Rayla thanked her and wiped off her face, glad to be free of the pain. Now the only thing she needed was a mirror, to assess the damage. She wrapped the bloody bandage in the towel and searched the room for a trash bin, but Sigrid told her that she could just throw it out when she went back outside.

"I need to get back to Solitude and tell that what's happened," Hadvar continued. "I thought that you could help us out."

"Of course!" Sigrid said, even as she handed Rayla a piece of bread.

"Any friend of Hadvar's is a friend of ours," Alvor agreed. "We're happy to help."

"Mmphmou," Rayla said through a mouthful of the best bread she'd ever tasted. She swallowed and tried again. "Thank you."

"But we need your help," Alvor suddenly added.

Rayla choked on her second bite of bread, and Sigrid offered her a canteen of water. Once Rayla washed down her surprise, she said, "What?"

Honestly, she hadn't expected anyone to ask her that. She wasn't against helping people—in Whiterun, she'd made a name for herself doing just that—but usually, people only asked her when she was wielding her good weapons and armor. But right now, she was an escaped prisoner wearing rusty armor with a scarred face. She imagined that she didn't really look the "helping" type.

Still, if Alvor was asking for help when she was like this, then it must be serious. In light of what had just happened, she imagined that it had something to do with the dragon.

"What do you need?" she asked, sitting up straight.

"The Jarl needs to know if there's a dragon on the loose!" Alvor said. "Riverwood is defenseless! If you can send word for him to send whatever soldiers he can, I'll be in your debt."

Well. That was by far the easiest thing she'd ever had to do for someone. Whiterun was just an hour's walk down the road, though she only knew that from seeing Riverwood on maps and had never been there before. Besides, was she really just supposed to _not_ inform the authorities that a dragon was on the loose somewhere? People deserved to know.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, we can do that."

"We?" Sigrid asked. "We're asking _you_." She sounded perplexed.

Rayla blinked. For the first time, she looked around the house, only to find that Lokir wasn't with them and hadn't been for some time.

A thief loose in a small town with no guards? She'd never heard of a worse idea.

She cursed and stood suddenly, saying, "I'll be right back."

Thieves. She hated thieves.


	5. Chapter 5

It didn't take her long to find the horse thief. While there weren't any horses in Riverwood from what she could see, she saw on the way in that there was a rather large shop, right across from Alvor's home.

The moment she opened the door leading outside, she saw a commotion. The door to the shop burst open, and Lokir came flying out, landing on his back with a pained grunt. A man carrying a steel sword marched out, dressed in a more expensive shirt and trousers than the other villagers around him.

"That'll teach you to steal from me!" the man said.

"H-h-hey, slow down!" Lokir stammered, lifting his hands in surrender even though he was still on the ground. "I wasn't stealing, I was…b-browsing!"

The store owner—whose name Rayla guessed was Lucan, judging by the name whispered around as people stopped to watch—sneered at Lokir and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and I'm the High King of Skyrim. Do you know what we do to thieves here?"

He raised his sword, and Lokir raised his hands over his face in a futile attempt to save himself.

_Clang!_ Before Lucan could swing his sword down on Lokir, Rayla had drawn her own, rusty sword and intercepted the blow. Both men stared at her in confusion, and she took the chance to hook her blade underneath the crossguard of Lucan's sword and disarm him. The sword landed in the dirt a few feet away. Slowly, Lucan raised his own hands in surrender.

But Rayla sheathed her sword and crossed her arms. "There's no need for violence, now is there, sir? Thievery in Whiterun hold is punishable by prison time, not death."

Despite her clear intentions, the shop owner glared at her as if she were a bandit. "No, of course not. Who are you?"

"My name is Rayla of Morthal," she said, and she nodded levelly at him. "And this thief is under my protection."

"Yeah!" Lokir said. At some point, he had scrambled to his feet and stood behind Rayla.

Rayla sighed, elbowed him in the ribs, and turned around to grab him by the ear when he was keeled over.

"And you!" she barked, feeling some of her frustration with him mount. Honestly! They'd been in Riverwood a grand total of twenty minutes and already he was trying to steal things. "You're coming with me."

"Ow!" Lokir exclaimed as she began to drag him away, toward the road that led to Whiterun.

"Shut up unless you want to get killed," Rayla muttered to him. She waved goodbye to Alvor and Sigrid, who had stepped onto their porch to see what the commotion was. "Thank you for your hospitality. I'll see what I can do about getting some guards down here." She sent a pointed look at Lucan.

As she dragged Lokir away, she couldn't help but wonder what she had gotten herself into.

* * *

Once they were a safe distance from Riverwood and out of view for good measure, Lokir slapped Rayla's hand away from his ear. She hadn't let go once, even once they left the town.

"_Ow!_" he yelled at her, rubbing his ear to try and alleviate the sting. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with _me?_ What's wrong with _you?_" Rayla demanded, spinning on him. He could tell by the fire in her green eyes that she was absolutely livid, and his question had just made things worse. "There was somebody willing to give you help—for _free_—and instead you decided to steal from a shop in broad daylight. How _thick_ are you?"

Lokir felt his lip twitch downward. "In case you didn't notice, we were just at an execution! How do you know that they wouldn't have turned us in to the Empire?"

"_Because they didn't turn me in, you piece of toe fungus!"_ Rayla shouted at him.

Under normal circumstances, Lokir would have laughed at her strange choice of insult, but he was too cowed by her sudden anger. It was probably a good thing—who knew how she would react if he just started chuckling. Instead, he tried to suppress the sudden feeling of idiocy that overtook him. As much as he hated to admit it, Rayla was right. Even though larceny was in his blood (supposedly), he should have just taken the easy option.

Huh. If that wasn't ironic, he didn't know what was.

Rayla sighed and rubbed her face. For the first time, Lokir realized that she was no longer wearing the bandage across her head. Instead, there was a long, pink scar reaching from the bottom of the right side of her chin and up to her left forehead. It was actually rather intimidating. Lokir already thought she was tough (and a bit of a pain, judging from what he had experienced so far), but this scar only increased the effect.

"Look," Rayla eventually said, sounding significantly more calm. "We have to go to Whiterun to help out Alvor—"

…and suddenly Lokir was frustrated again. "_We?_ I wasn't aware that I was bound to you."

And then, with a start, he realized that he never actually learned how this woman knew who he was and where he was raised. There was no possible way she could know that unless she was some sort of stalker, was there?

He sent a sudden flash of fear as he thought of another possibility. Perhaps the blasted _traitor _had sent her? There was a bounty on his head, so it was possible that she was there to collect. It would explain why she had worked so hard to keep him alive. Bounties were worth more when the wanted person was brought back alive.

Yes, that had to be it. Why else would she risk her life for his so many times? There had to be something in it for her.

He took a step backward as adrenaline flooded his veins once more. She was more weighed down than he was by her borrowed armor, even though he still had the satchel on his back. Perhaps he could outrun her?

However, Rayla must have seen the fearful look in his eyes, because she sighed once more. "I'm not going to hurt you, idiot," she said, rubbing the bottom part of her facial scar.

"How do I know that?" Lokir responded, trying his best to keep his cowardice out of his voice. It didn't work very well. "How do you even know who I am? Why were you caught in the ambush in the first place?"

She made a face. He couldn't tell if it was a conflicted one or just a doubtful one. Possibly both. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Oh, that was the easy way out. No way was he letting her get away with that. Lokir didn't consider himself to be a particularly bold Nord, but when it came to his own safety, he was practically a bear. For all he knew, she could be trying to wiggle her way out of his questions. Any moment now, she could just decide that it was easier to hit him over the head and haul him back to Riften in a burlap sack. "Try me."

She frowned and sat on a fallen tree near the side of the cobblestone road and rested her chin in her hands, staring up at Lokir like he was some kind of fascinating museum piece.

"I had a dream," she said simply.

Well, now he _knew_ she was making things up. He should just run now, while he had the chance. He could just jump into the river nearby, and the current could wash him far enough downstream that he would be able to escape.

But something stopped him. Just a few hours ago, he'd experienced the most strange and terrifying thing in his life. A dragon, something that he thought was just a legend, had attacked and killed almost everyone in Helgen. And then there was that incident with the mage in the dungeons…

Lokir shuddered at the memory, and the satchel around his shoulder suddenly felt heavier. A lot of things had happened that he would have had trouble believing if he hadn't been there himself. Besides, Rayla didn't seem like the kind of person who was prone to flights of fancy. If nothing else, having her explain what she meant could provide him with a valuable distraction if he needed to escape.

"What do you mean?" he asked carefully. "What kind of dream?"

Rayla gave him a suspicious glance, then eventually pondered his question for a moment. Eventually, she spoke.

"I was standing on top of some kind of mountain at night," she said, closing her eyes and clearly trying to remember. "And there was this giant dragon standing right in front of me."

Lokir flinched. He couldn't help it. It had only been a few hours ago that he had watched the terrible black dragon descend on Helgen with wings as black as night and fiery doom following in his wake. Yet Rayla spoke of this dragon in her dream in an almost friendly manner.

"It was big and gray," she continued, "and looked old. And it spoke our language." Then she opened her eyes and looked right at Lokir, which made him feel incredibly unnerved. "It told me to find 'Lokir of Rorikstead, a horse thief who will be captured by the Imperials and taken to Helgen.' The dragon told me that the thief would be integral to helping me 'defeat the first-born,' whatever that means. Then I saw you, in the cart, _days _before it actually happened."

Lokir swallowed. If true, that was either terrifying or incredible. If the last few hours of his life hadn't just occurred, he would have called Rayla crazy. As it was, he was still tempted to do just that. But it was something that the not-dead mage had said that made him pause.

"_Nocturnal. Akatosh. Take my robes."_

Strange. But Akatosh was always depicted as a dragon, and Lokir had heard ridiculous stories from priests about premonitions they'd had in dreams. He decided not to eliminate the dream as a possibility—but he wouldn't eliminate the possibility that she was there for his bounty, either. Not yet.

"So what exactly do you need me for?" Lokir asked, still a bit wary. Could this be some sort of trick?

Rayla rubbed her neck in a way that made her look a bit awkward. "I don't know exactly what the dragon in my dream meant, but I know it was true. I was testing it out when I ran right into you and the Imperial ambush. The dream has to mean _something_." She stood from the log and crossed her arms. "I want you to come with me for a while, just to see what happens."

Well…Lokir hadn't been expecting _that_ to come out of her mouth. Surely there were easier ways to drag him down to Riften?

As he was still dealing with the shock of her statement, she added something else. "And I can pay you, too. Name your price."

She certainly knew how to get a thief's attention. Lokir physically _felt _his greed kick in. Any price, just for tagging around with a warrior and letting her do all the heavy lifting? He was sure that easier money had never been made.

"Ten thousand septims," he said after a moment. That was more than he ever dreamed of owning, but if she meant it, she would pay up—and if it was a trap, she would just knock him out now.

Rayla's eye twitched fervently for a moment, but she didn't make any move to harm him. "Fine," she said. "Ten thousand septims. Deal?"

"Deal!" Lokir exclaimed. With ten thousand septims, he could easily pay off his bounty, and still have several thousand septims left over!

Rayla stuck out her hand for Lokir to shake, and shake it he did. Her hand was rough and calloused, but it also seemed honest. He hoped his assessment of her would turn out to be correct in the long run.

She made a face as she released his hand, eyeing the side of his head with distaste. "And for the gods' sake, shave the other side of your head!" she said. "Your hair looks like a half-dead squid."

Lokir winced as she turned toward the road. He knew she was right. His face was also so covered in dirt that it was impossible for him not to breathe it in every time he inhaled. And he could also do with a change of clothes…Talos, he was a mess.

But that was something that ten thousand septims could easily fix.

* * *

When Lokir emerged from around the rock he had changed behind, Rayla was in for her hundredth shock of the day. The scoundrel actually…didn't look half-bad.

He'd shaved the rest of his head, so that his long hair style had converted to more of a sloppy crew cut. He'd also managed to wash his face completely clear of all the grime and muck that coated it, so she was able to get a clear look at his features for the first time. He had sharp features, for a thief, and high cheekbones. He'd also thrown away his dirty prisoner rags and had thrown on the robes of the mage.

On one level, that was a bit disturbing. But Rayla understood that Lokir didn't have any other clothes, and she also knew that the creepy, dead mage had explicitly told Lokir to take his robes. Besides, the mage robes came with a hood, and now that Lokir was known in Riverwood as a thief, it would be best for him to keep his head down. The blue and beige tunic seemed to be a perfect fit, which she thought was odd until she saw the belt clasped tightly. Another mage mystery: how they actually managed for their robes to be "one-size-fits-all."

"Excellent," Rayla said, flipping up her own hood. "Let's go." She turned around and began to stride toward Whiterun, and felt Lokir run up next to her.

"Urm," he said, flipping up his own tan-colored hood. His face was hardly visible in the shadows of the hood. "What exactly are _we_ going to Whiterun for, again?"

"Well, rest, for one," she responded, imagining the comfort that her bed would bring her after today. "And I also promised Alvor that I would inform Jarl Balgruuf of the dragon attack and get Riverwood some more guards." She could tell that he was a bit confused by what she had said, so she elaborated. "I…have a house in Whiterun."

"Have you ever met the Jarl?" Lokir asked. She thought she could sense the nervousness in his voice, which made sense to her. Thieves were bound to be cautious around authority figures.

"Once or twice," Rayla responded. She squinted at the height of the sun in the sky. "Come on. We want to get to Whiterun before the sun sets."

"Uh, why?" the thief asked her.

"Because," she said, exasperated. "That's when the bandits, wolves, and saber cats come out." Honestly, had this man ever traveled _anywhere _before?

"Oh," he eventually said, his voice an octave higher than usual. "How…fun."

Rayla didn't even justify that with a response.

The good thing was that they were only about an hour's walk from Whiterun. The bad news was that the sun was already beginning to set, and she knew that the guards were more hesitant to let people into the city after dark. With the threat of Stormcloaks around, the guards were taking security a bit more seriously. Even so, she and Lokir made good time on the roads. It helped that Rayla didn't have any of her _normal _possessions to weigh her down during a journey, which meant that she could move faster.

But she did feel more jumpy than usual. Every time the wind rustled a bush on the side of the road, she'd flinch ever so slightly, and she knew that Lokir was doing the same. The events of the day had taken their toll on both former prisoners, so much so that every breeze began to resemble the roar of the terrible black dragon.

Rayla was definitely relieved when they reached the gates of Whiterun. While the sun had just faded from behind the horizon, she could see several guards holding torches on the walls. She knew most of the guards in the city, so they should let her in no problem. It was the thief dressed as a mage at her side that she was worried about. Whiterun guards were just as distrustful of mages as any other hold guard.

When they stepped past the fortified, crumbling stone walls, she could finally let herself relax. Whiterun had been her home for years, and it was one of the few places in Skyrim where she could finally let her guard down—though never completely.

"This is…safe," Lokir muttered as they stepped onto the creaky drawbridge.

"It's fine," Rayla told him, though she stayed away from the edges of the bridge. "It's held entire crowds of people." At least, she assumed.

"Halt!" one of the guards in yellow armor barked, once Rayla and Lokir were close enough. "The city is closed with the dragons about." Behind his steel helm, Rayla imagined that the guard was eying Lokir suspiciously. "Official business only."

Oh, Rayla was just too tired for this. With a sigh, she lowered her borrowed hood and looked the guard in the eyes. "I'm the Thane. Let me and my companion in at once."

The guard instantly straightened. "I…my apologies, Thane, I didn't realize it was you. You and your friend can go right in."

Rayla nodded at the guard to spare herself the energy needed to make a response. As the guard rushed to open the large gates for them, Lokir leaned over to her and whispered, "Nice ruse."

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Who said it was a ruse?"

Lokir looked at her blankly for a moment, then must have realized that she was serious. His jaw dropped, and he gaped at her. She couldn't resist a smirk as the guards succeeded in opening the gates.

"Here you are, my Thane," the guard from before said. "I'm sorry for the delay."

"Don't worry about it," Rayla told him as she walked past.

Once they had successfully passed the guards, and the gate had been shut behind them, Lokir rushed up to her side and hissed, "You're the _Thane?"_

"Did I not mention that?" Rayla said, making a contemplative face. She felt a flicker of amusement as she watched Lokir's gape turn into a glare. Perhaps traveling with a thief would be worthwhile after all.

She heard Lokir mutter a series of curses as she patted down her pockets, before she realized that the key to her house had been the pocket of the clothes she'd been wearing when the Imperials had captured her. Then it was her turn to mutter a curse.

"Come on," she told Lokir. "It's this house."

"This one?" he asked her. "It looks a little…small."

Breezehome was, indeed, smaller than the other houses in Whiterun. But that was how Rayla preferred it. Besides, she had made a few modifications to accommodate all of her storage needs. And it had been the only house available when she had decided to move to the hold. And she liked the cozy feel that the house had. There were a few flowers planted by the door, and she was careful not to step on them as she walked up.

She rapped her knuckles on the wooden door three times. A few moments later, she heard the call, "The Thane is away!"

Rayla chuckled and called back, "Lydia, it's me! I've misplaced my key, can you let me in?"

She looked back at Lokir with another laugh when she heard the sounds of shuffling inside. A second later, the door swung open to reveal a tall woman with dark hair in steel armor standing inside.

"My Thane?" Lydia asked, looking confused. Her expression quickly changed to one of concern as she saw the scar on Rayla's face. "What…happened to you? And who's this?"

"It's a long story," Rayla responded, "which I will tell you in a moment. Could you let us inside? It's getting cold out here."

Lydia stepped inside, and Rayla gratefully stepped inside, sighing in relief when she smelled the familiar scents of her home. She heard Lokir step in after her, but she was too focused on unbuckling the sheath at her hip and tossing it aside.

She turned around to find Lokir looking around curiously at the interior of her house. The room they were standing in was a combination of the kitchen and the dining room, and—at least, in Rayla's opinion—it smelled wonderful.

"Make yourself at home," she said. "I'm going to change before I go see the Jarl."

"The Jarl?" Lydia asked. "At this time of night? Rayla, what's going on?"

"Like I said," Rayla explained. "It's a long story. Besides, the Jarl has a bad habit of staying up late. I'm sure he'll still be in the court when I arrive." She nodded at her thief friend, who was in the middle of munching on a sweet roll. "This is Lokir, by the way. If you have questions, I'm sure he can fill you in."

Lokir looked up with a full mouth, looking confused under his hood. "Whumph?"

"Wonderful," Lydia deadpanned.

"You'll have fun," Rayla assured her. "Now if you excuse me, I have a date with some clean clothes."

She was so tired that she could hardly climb the steps up to her bedroom. But she was determined to rid herself of the shoddy armor and ragged clothes she was wearing underneath. The second floor of her house was mostly full of decorations. One wall had three weapon plaques on them, though she'd only managed to fill one of them (with a sword from one of the Alik'r). She mostly ignored her surroundings as she opened the door to her bedroom.

To say her room was lavish was a lie, but neither was it spartan. She cared more about practicality than anything else, so her bed was large and comfy, but not outlandishly expensive. The dresser to the side of the room only had one or two changes of clothes in them, and the chest at the foot of her bed only carried the essentials.

Rayla made sure her door was shut and locked before she stripped down, kicked her smelly clothes for good measure, and crossed the room to her dresser. As quickly as her tired mind and body could, she redressed in a simple white tunic and brown trousers, both made out of sensible cotton. Her own clothes were significantly more comfortable than whatever it was that the Imperials forced their prisoners to wear. She sighed in relief. Before she went back downstairs, she made sure to grab the Elven dagger that she kept under one of her pillows and strapped it to her waist. While she was unlikely to be in danger in the middle of Whiterun, it never hurt to be prepared. Especially after the day she'd just had.

Rayla paused to examine the scar on her face in the small mirror that she kept on the wall. She'd never been one to care much about her appearance, but this…this was different. The scar on her face was unmistakable, and not easy to hide. It was long, thick, and pink, and reached across most of her face. As she stared at the scar in the mirror, she realized how lucky she was that the dragon's claw hadn't broken her nose, and even more lucky that she hadn't been killed by a stupid mistake.

She snapped out of her reverie soon enough. As she heard Lokir's voice drifting up through the floorboards of her room, she remembered her dilemma involving the thief-for-hire. Quietly, so as to not alert the man as to where she kept her money, she opened the chest at the foot of her bed—moved several books aside—and, as fast and accurately as she could, counted out five thousands septims and put them in a brown sack large enough to hold the sum. Shaking her head, she opened the door and began to descend the stairs once more.

"So…there was a dragon," Rayla heard Lydia say, doubt dripping from her words. "And you're sure you haven't had anything to drink? No skooma, either?"

"He's telling the truth, Lydia," Rayla said as she reached the first floor and strode to the kitchen. Lokir was seated in front of a steaming bowl of tomato soup at a smaller table, and Lydia was leaning on the wall facing him. Rayla could see that the cooking pot in the center of the room was full of more of the soup. One of Lydia's many talents was that she could cook a mean dinner.

Lydia shook her head in disbelief. "I heard the guards talking about it in the market earlier today, but I thought that they had just been drunk." She crossed her arms and sent Rayla a glare. "You should have let me come with you."

Rayla rolled her eyes and grabbed an apple from off one of the kitchen's shelves as she moved toward the door. "We've been over this, Lydia. I had to go _alone_, so the Imperials could capture me."

Lydia huffed. "And look what happened to you."

Rayla winced. One of the reasons she liked Lydia was because she was so blunt, but bluntness wasn't exactly what she wanted to hear right now. As she walked to the door, she suddenly remembered Lokir.

"Here," she said, tossing the bag of coins to him. The thief caught it clumsily. "Half now, half when…whatever we have to do is done."

"That's fair," Lokir said evenly, though she could still hear the disappointment in his voice.

_Talos,_ Rayla thought as she opened the door to Whiterun. _What have I gotten myself into this time?_


	6. Chapter 6

Lokir got the feeling that Lydia didn't like him very much.

The housecarl didn't even try to hide it. After Rayla left to go have her talk with the Jarl, he tried to focus on finishing the tomato soup that she had made—with plenty of hesitation and passive-aggressive grumbling—a few minutes beforehand. He kept the pouch of five thousand coins close to his breast, suddenly aware that this single sum was more gold than he had ever owned. Lydia glared at him the whole time. It was quite unnerving, especially because her hand seemed to stray toward her sword every time he so much as breathed in her direction.

Eventually, Lokir decided to just cut his losses and try and get some sleep while Rayla dealt with the favor to the Riverwood blacksmith. The moment he stood up, Lydia straightened, and this time her hand was very clearly on her sword. Oh, yes, she did not like him.

"Steady on," Lokir said, hands in the air. His tactic of surrender was somewhat lessened by the pouch of money in his left hand. "I'm just going to go to sleep now. Is there an extra bed around here somewhere?"

Lydia glared at him, blatant distrust on her face. "In the basement, thief."

Lokir winced. He _knew _he should have left that part of the story out! Rayla probably would have mentioned it to the housecarl eventually, though, so at least they were getting the hostilities out of the way now.

"...and where is the basement?" Lokir asked, when Lydia did not volunteer any more information.

Lydia made a face, then sighed and took her hand off of her sword. "This way."

Lokir held the pouch of septims close to him as he followed the housecarl to a small area underneath the stairs that led up. Lydia kneeled down, moved a few empty baskets out of the way, and opened a small trapdoor in the floor.

Lokir gulped as she handed him a lantern and some flint and steel. He felt like a prisoner being forced to sleep with the skeevers.

Wait. There weren't any skeevers down there, were there?

Lydia smirked when she sensed Lokir's discomfort. "Rayla had this put in after a thief broke in last year."

Ah. No wonder this housecarl didn't like him. Lokir glanced down into the darkness and tried not to balk at it. Rayla seemed like a sensible, moral-driven woman. It would be completely unlike what he had seen so far from her to put some kind of monster in her basement.

_Idiot,_ he told himself. _How old are you, ten? Do you want sleep or not?_

"And there's a bed down here somewhere, I presume?" Lokir said, opening the lid of the lantern and trying his best to light the wick with the flint and steel. He was forced to tie the bag of money to his belt.

Lydia nodded, still smirking. With a sigh, Lokir hooked the handle of the lantern around his wrist and stepped onto the creaky wooden ladder. Wouldn't it just be easier to haul the bed up to the first floor, rather than having Lokir sleep down there?

One look at Lydia's face, and he knew that suggesting that was out of the question. Resigned to his fate, Lokir frowned and began to descend into the basement.

From what he could see as the ladder swayed dangerously underneath him, the basement was a small room underneath the house, made entirely of cold stone. If not for the lantern in his hands, the room would have been entirely dark. The closer he got to the floor, the more he could see of the room. The walls were lined with multiple chests with large locks on them, and there was a small cot in the corner.

"Wonderful," Lokir said as he reached the bottom. He grabbed the handle of the lantern and held it up around him to look at the dreary room underneath Breezehome. If he squinted his eyes, it wasn't half-bad.

There was a _thud_ as Lydia closed the trapdoor above him, and then he was alone in the creepy basement. What could possibly go wrong?

Lokir sighed. The first thing he did was drag the cot to the center of the room and wrap himself in the blankets. The mage's robes were comfy, but they weren't great for warmth. Then he sat cross-legged on the cot and emptied out the contents of his knapsack.

For the moment, he pushed aside the two books from Helgen and the single bottle of mead he had managed to swipe from Lucan's shop, and grabbed the four lockpicks and knife. After all, he was a thief, wasn't he? What did they expect, placing him in a room full of valuables?

He did feel a little prick on his conscience, however. He'd struck a deal with Rayla that, even though he didn't fully understand it, meant that it was a sort of contract. The first rule of thieving was to never do anything to violate the contract. _And _if he violated Rayla's trust, she might just decide to get rid of him and be done with it—or worse, turn him in to the guards.

Lokir dismissed the notion as best he could. Thieves didn't worry about _morals,_ did they? If the others could hear what he was thinking, they'd scoff and tell him that he was soft.

He fisted the lockpicks and his knife and told himself to stop being such a wuss. Wrapping the blankets more tightly around himself, he stood from off his cot and brought the lantern over to one of the chests with the smallest locks. Since he had a limited amount of lockpicks, he'd have to pick the easiest lock first.

Carefully, he inserted the knife and lockpick and began to twist his right hand. Almost immediately, the lockpick broke.

"Bloody hell," Lokir muttered. Only the toughest locks broke picks that easily. Now he was down to three. No wonder Lydia hadn't been threatened by placing him in a room of valuables.

_Appearances can be deceiving,_ his father had once told him, referring to locks and picking pockets. Lokir cursed his idiocy and moved on to the next lock, only to experience the same thing.

Moving on to the third chest, Lokir took time to examine the lock. This one was particularly large, and had many scratches on the inside—it took him a painstaking amount of time to arrange the lantern in order to squint inside the lock. There were two possible explanations for the scratches on the inside of the lock: either someone had tried to pick the lock before, or the chest was opened so often that the key had left scratches on the inside. And if the key had left scratches on the inside, it was also likely that the lock was tough, and the key had been twisted roughly and quickly.

That was one of the more obscure lessons about lockpicking that Lokir had received from his father. He tried his best to take deep breaths to slow his frustrated heartbeat. He could pick the easier locks without difficulty, but harder locks often took multiple tries, and he just couldn't do that with the two lockpicks that he had left. Angrily, he kicked the shards of the broken lockpicks across the room and sat back down on his cot.

Shivering, he tied the blankets around his shoulders and stuffed the lockpicks back in his bag for a later time. He doubted that, wherever they went next (if they went anywhere at all), Rayla would allow him to buy more lockpicks.

He pulled the lantern closer to him and starting putting his belongings back inside his meager bag. He took extra care with the sack of coins and placed it at the very bottom of the pack for safekeeping. Then he picked up the black book with the symbol of the dragon on it—titled _The Book of the Dragonborn_—and half-heartedly flipped through some of the pages. He physically felt his eyes gloss over when he read some of the historical statistics and closed the book. He'd never been much of a history nut, but maybe he could find one and sell the book to them.

Lokir paid even less attention to the book the mage had been holding as he let the pages flip under his thumb. He knew that non-magic wielders—AKA most Nords—wouldn't be able to read a spell tome unless they had some kind of magicka in them. He was mostly thinking about who he could possibly sell a spell tome to, since he didn't know any mages. Perhaps a prospective student to the College of Winterhold, if he came across one?

_Zap!_

Lokir cursed and dropped the book, nursing his thumb. It stung like someone had just struck it with a whip, and was as red as a tomato.

Had the book just…shocked him?

He gulped and looked over the side of the cot, where the book waited on the floor. When he'd dropped it, the book had landed face down, so that the spine was facing up. Carefully, he brought the lantern closer to the book as he squinted at it. Magic was unpredictable, as all Nords knew. But Lokir was ignorant to the more…volatile claims involving magic, though he knew there were ones. However, he'd always been too curious for his own good. Any other Nord would have burned the book, but he wanted answers.

As he squinted at the book cautiously, he could suddenly make out several characters written on the spine, just like any other book. When he looked closer—almost falling off of the cot in the process—he just saw a bunch of squiggly lines.

And then the lines began to _move._

His eyes widened as he watched the characters on the side of the spine rearrange themselves into a written language that he could comprehend, until the words very clearly spelled "_Sparks."_

"What in the name of Talos…?" Lokir muttered. There was only one way to find out what was happening, or if he was going crazy.

Carefully, he reached out his hand and grabbed the book. He flinched away almost immediately, but he felt no pain. Had the first shock been just a fluke? Swallowing his apprehension, Lokir steeled himself. Then he grabbed the book firmly.

Still no pain. His curiosity was practically suffocating him now, like a giant sabre cat had just sat on his chest. Holding the lantern in one hand and the spell tome in the other, Lokir peered at the book cover.

The book was wrapped in a dark gray cover, and was emblazoned with the silver image of what looked like a fireball, or possibly a hand. Perhaps both.

The strangest part was when Lokir actually opened the book. It was dead silent in the basement, so the sound of the pages rustling seemed as deafening as a Giant's footsteps. With the lantern sitting at his side, and clutching the book with both hands, Lokir peered at the first page.

Immediately, he felt a jolt throughout his entire body. It was almost as if he had been struck by lightning, but lessened by a thousand times. And his eyes were glued to the page. He could do nothing but read.

Later, he wouldn't be able to recall what was in the book. But in that moment, it made perfect sense to him. It was as if someone had added a missing piece to his mind, and the image it made was suddenly complete. He was alive with energy as he furiously read the book, his eyes consuming the pages hungrily.

And then, all of a sudden, it was gone. Lokir blinked in confusion as he realized that he had miraculously finished the book, despite the fact that it was as thick as an iron ingot. As soon as he realized that, the spell tome collapsed into ash, as if it had never been there in the first place.

For a full minute, Lokir just sat there, in an utterly confused state. The knowledge of what he had just read was there, in his mind, but the words themselves were fading as quickly as daylight at dusk.

Then he realized that there was a _buzz_ in his hands. It felt rather like what he'd experienced as he'd read the spell tome. And when he looked down, he felt his eyes nearly fall out of his head.

Most of the room's illumination was no longer coming from the lantern. Instead, the room was cast in a blue-purple light that originated from Lokir's hands. Because, crackling on his fingers like a miniature storm, were dozens of tongues of lightning.

Lokir was so surprised that he fell right off the cot. In his distress, he felt a _pull_ in his gut, and the lightning on his hands burst outward, crashing into the ceiling of the basement with an incredibly loud sizzling sound.

He cried out with no small amount of fright as he sat up—because the lightning didn't stop. It kept pouring out of his hands like some sort of electrical fountain, slamming into the walls with a deafening _thud-sizzzzzle_. Underneath it all, he felt a strange sort of energy fading from him, like he was draining a well that he hadn't known was full.

"Stop it!" Lokir shouted, and a small voice in the back of his head berated him for talking to his own hands.

But it worked. The moment he uttered the words, he felt the pull in his gut cease. The lightning pouring out of his fingers stopped suddenly, though it still flowed over his fingers and palms.

He heard a sudden _clank_ overhead and some shouts, and then the trapdoor above slammed open. A moment later, someone dropped down to the floor, a Elven dagger held at the ready. In the light from the lightning on Lokir's hands, her facial scar seemed immeasurably more eerie.

Rayla's confused face flicked from the lightning in Lokir's fingers, to his puzzled and frightened face, to the deep gouges that his lightning had made in the wall, to the ashes of the spell tome on the floor. Then her brow furrowed, and she relaxed, sheathing the dagger she held.

"Well," she eventually said, looking just as bewildered as he felt, "Congratulations, Lokir. You're a mage."

* * *

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	7. Chapter 7

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* * *

Danica Pure-Spring looked very confused when Rayla dragged a discombobulated Lokir into the Temple of Kynareth at around nine o'clock at night.

"Rayla?" she said, looking up from a book that she read from between two slumbering, injured guards. "Wha—"

"I need your help," Rayla interrupted, pushing Lokir forward. His hood had fallen down, allowing his addled face to clearly show in the bright light of the temple. "More accurately, _he_ needs your help."

Danica stepped forward, analyzing Lokir quickly. "Well, there doesn't seem to be anything _physically_ wrong with him, but—"

Lokir's hands began to spark again. He cursed and quickly clenched his hands, and the magic went away. Danica didn't look impressed.

"—he reeks of uncontrolled magicka," she finished.

"Uncontrolled _what?_" Lokir exclaimed, and his hands began to spark once more.

"Magicka," Rayla deadpanned, crossing her arms. "You know, the thing that fuels _spells_. For instance, the spell you used to _wreck my basement, Lokir!_"

Lokir was still tense, but he rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. It was just a wall."

"Yeah! A wall that I spent good money on!"

Danica coughed. Rayla huffed and gestured toward Lokir with both hands. "Can you please just…_do_ something?"

Danica patiently nodded and looked over at Lokir. "Lokir, is it? Is this your first time using a spell?"

He blanched at the word "spell," but then he nodded. More of the blue electricity began to crackle on his hands almost immediately.

"Just take a deep breath," Danica told him. "Focus on closing the door to your magicka storage."

"I didn't even know I _had_ that," Lokir grunted, but he closed his eyes and focused on doing what she said.

While he concentrated, Rayla sat on one of the chairs near a stone healing bench and looked around the temple. As always, the single-roomed worship center helped her relax. It was filled with a golden light, along with elaborate carvings on the walls and floor. It also smelled like vanilla.

A few moments later, Lokir opened one eye and peered down at his hands. "I think I did it?" He sounded unsure of himself.

"Open your hands, then," Danica instructed him. When he stared at her hesitantly, she added, "It will be fine. Go on."

And Lokir did. This time, when he opened his hands, no lightning sprung from them. There wasn't even a flicker of light. Rayla and Lokir breathed a sigh of relief almost simultaneously. She would never hear the end of it from the guards if she wrecked the Temple of Kynareth.

"Well done," Danica told Lokir, sending him one of the motherly smiles that Rayla had grown used to. Then, to Rayla, "How exactly did this happen? It's not every day a new mage is discovered, especially not in Whiterun."

Rayla pondered how best to answer that question. "It's a…long story."

"Why don't you tell me, while I get Lokir something a little bit more…practical," Danica said.

Rayla had no idea what the priestess meant by "practical," but it became apparent after a moment, when Danica rummaged through a pile of books near Rayla's chair and withdrew a spell tome. While not a mage herself, Rayla knew enough of magic to know that the spell the book contained belonged to the school of Restoration, and was probably a basic healing spell.

Rayla was surprised to see Lokir's eyes light up when he saw the book. He'd been so freaked out by what he'd done in the basement that she assumed he'd be frightened of another spell tome. Instead, he took the book with an excitement that she found didn't fit with her image of a thief, or of his personality so far. As he opened the book and began to read at an incredibly fast pace (another surprise), Danica pulled Rayla to the other side of the room.

In a hushed voice, and with one eye on the magical thief to make sure he didn't steal anything, Rayla began.

"Remember that dream I had a day or two ago?" she said.

Danica's eyebrows jumped up in surprise. "Don't tell me this is the one?"

Rayla sighed. "This is the one."

When she had first received her dream, or vision, or whatever it was, she had gone to Danica first. After Rayla had restored the Gildergreen, they'd become good friends. It didn't hurt that Danica was an expert healer, either.

Danica looked back at Lokir as he flipped through the book she'd given him. "Well…I must admit, he does seem to be gifted at spellcraft."

Rayla cocked an eyebrow. "You can tell that just from the way he's reading a book?" She'd admit that the rate at which he was reading was impressive, but she wouldn't call it extraordinary.

Danica shook her head. "It was how quickly he gained control of his magic. Usually, at least with the novices I've worked with, it takes them a good hour to get things under control—or until they exhaust their magicka."

Rayla thought about that for a moment. "Couldn't that have something to do with the robes he's wearing? I hear mage's robes are magically charged."

"No," Danica replied. "The robes deal with magicka _enhancement_, not _suppression_. Even so, the robes he is wearing are very basic."

Rayla cocked her head and watched the thief as the book he was reading suddenly collapsed into dust. As if that wasn't enough, one of his hands suddenly glowed with a bright blue light. A second later, a large, transparent blue shield burst in existence. It was about Lokir's height and width, and behind the shield, she could see a joyful expression on his face that was almost…boyish.

"It's called a 'ward,'" Danica explained to Lokir. "It will protect you from magical and weapons damage alike."

Lokir's grin only widened. It was actually sort of nice to see. Perhaps there was more to this man than just a thief.

She quickly forgot that sentiment as she remembered her second problem. As Lokir practiced with the blue shield, Rayla pulled Danica even further aside and whispered, "There's another thing that I need your advice on."

"What is it?" the priestess replied.

"Lokir and I struck a deal," Rayla began. "For ten thousand septims, he'll come with me until whatever destiny has in store for us is over with. Five thousand now, and five thousand later."

She made sure her voice was too quiet for Lokir to hear as she added, "And I don't have the other half of the money, Danica. I don't know what I'm supposed to do! He's a thief. Thieves _thrive_ on money!"

Danica looked at Rayla in the motherly way that both annoyed and comforted her. After a moment, she shook her head.

"You're thinking too short-term, dear," she said after a moment.

"What do you mean?" Rayla asked, feeling a bit frustrated that the priestess was taking her problem so lightly.

"Destiny is an inscrutable entity," Danica replied mysteriously. Then, a bit more plainly, "It's not a 'one-and-done' thing, child. And it often reshapes and molds you in ways you don't expect. Never judge a book by its cover."

Rayla scowled. One of the things about priests and priestesses is that they often, and in an annoying fashion, made points like that about destiny and fate. It was even more annoying that they were usually right. But that didn't mean that Rayla had to like it.

"Ugh," she groaned. "Fine. But what do I do about the money? You know I hate welching on a deal."

Danica chuckled. "A woman of your talents? You'll come across the five thousand septims easily."

"Woah!" Lokir suddenly exclaimed from across the room. The shield he'd made had flickered out of existence very suddenly, slightly lowering the bright illumination of the temple. He looked over at Danica, looking even more bewildered. "What happened?"

"You ran out of magicka," the older woman explained patiently. She seemed impressed. "For a novice, you have a surprisingly deep well of it. It will increase over time, with practice."

His eyes lit up. "Do you have any more books?" he asked, looking around the room in an excited manner.

Danica laughed as she crossed over to him, signifying that her secret conversation with Rayla was over. "Yes, but it isn't safe for young mages such as yourself to consume so many spell tomes at once. The instructions will become mixed up in the back of your mind, and you could end up blowing yourself up!"

Lokir blanched. When Rayla saw the fear in his eyes, she found it a lot easier to believe that this man was a thief. "Oh. Okay."

But Danica had better news than that. As she dug through another pile of books, she said, "Here. This is a basic healing spell." She lifted another golden book and made to hand it to him, but then retracted it for a moment. "You can't read it until tomorrow."

Lokir frowned, but he nodded. "Okay." When finally handed him the book, his brown eyes lit up in that strange way again. It reminded Rayla of the time she'd helped the little girl who used to be homeless in Whiterun—Lucia—find a new home in Dragon Bridge.

"Now," Danica said, beckoning Rayla over from the other side of the room. "It's late. You need your rest for tomorrow. I understand that the court wizard has bestowed yet another task on you?"

Rayla blinked. "How did you know that?"

Danica smiled and winked at her. "Word travels fast in Whiterun, even this late at night. Stay safe." She bowed in a traditional way. "Kynareth guide you."

"And you as well, Danica," Rayla replied. She waited for Lokir to jump up from the table he was sitting on and pushed the door to the temple open.

"Urm…where exactly are y—I mean, _we_ going?" he asked her nervously.

Rayla sighed and scratched the bottom part of her scar.

"We," she said, "are going to a wonderful little place called Bleak Falls Barrow."

* * *

It took Lokir a long time, but he finally managed to get some semblance of rest in the basement of Rayla's home. He was simply too excited.

For once in his life, he'd found something that he was actually _good _at! He'd tried farming, and that hadn't exactly been _fulfilling_ work. Even as a thief—which he had to admit had many benefits—he'd felt like something was missing. Now he knew what it was: _magic_. Never in a thousand years would he have guessed that someone like him would have that sort of gift.

Of course, he still had plenty of questions. Nords were not exactly considered magically _apt_. In fact, he couldn't remember if he'd ever met a Nord mage. Most Nords shunned magic. Lokir had never really seen the harm in it—after all, thieves used lockpicks, enchanted armor, and potions in order to succeed. Wasn't magic just another tool?

More importantly, he had questions about his childhood. He was literally raised by a mage in Rorikstead, who had been hired as his caretaker. Wouldn't Jouane Manette have noticed some sort of magical sign in Lokir? And if so, wouldn't he have done something, or said something?

It was these sorts of questions, along with an eagerness to read the spell book in the morning, that kept Lokir awake for a few hours in the darkness of Rayla's basement until his exhaustion from the day ultimately won. And then, of course, his mind wouldn't allow him any rest.

In his nightmares, he was back in Helgen. All sorts of horrible things kept happening to him. First, he was marched to the chopping block, and his head was removed from his shoulders. Then he was shot by archers when he tried to escape.

And then came the images of the horrible black dragon. The dragon's roar haunted Lokir's mind, along with the image of fire exploding from its maw. When he finally awoke, he was sweating and shaking all over.

In all the excitement from his newfound skill, he'd nearly forgotten about the horrors earlier in the day. Of course, he wasn't so lucky as to forget it. Fate couldn't be _too_ kind to him.

Lokir sat up on his cot in the darkness and took a few deep breaths. After a minute or two of this, he felt a bit calmer, even if he could still hear the dragon's roar in his ears.

As soon as he was relaxed, the trap door above him slammed open, startling him and ruining the calm he'd managed to cultivate. A moment later, Rayla descended the ladder, wearing a red tunic and black pants. A steel amulet of Talos hung around her neck. She carried a lantern in her right hand, finally bringing some light into the basement.

When she reached the bottom, Lokir could see that she obviously hadn't slept very well either. Her green eyes were bloodshot, and dark bags sat underneath them.

"Awake already?" she asked in a tired voice when she saw Lokir sitting up on his cot.

Lokir nodded as he yawned and stretched, trying his best to put the images of the dragon and Helgen out of mind. How had that only been a day before? It felt like a lifetime ago.

Rayla rubbed her face and pointed at the cot after a moment. "I need you to move that. You're in front of one of my chests."

He blinked. Before he'd laid down the night before, he'd dragged his cot over to one of the corners of the room, for he found that there was a slight draft in the middle of the basement. As such, his cheap bed was blocking several chests, one of which was the chest that had been opened many times before.

He felt the familiar flame of curiosity burst into being as he jumped up and dragged his cot away. What could possibly be in that chest, to warrant Rayla viewing it all the time? From what he knew of her so far, she didn't seem like the kind of person to dwell over wealth—unless, of course, you damaged her basement wall—so he found it unlikely that there would be fabulous riches in the chest. What could it be?

Unfortunately, it seemed that his questions would not be answered today, because the chest that Rayla opened with a key from her belt was the chest _next_ to the well-used one. She set the lantern on top of the mysterious chest in question and propped open the current chest with a small iron latch. Curiously, Lokir watched her extract several golden pieces of armor—armor that he barely managed to recognize as Elven.

Now _that_ was curious indeed. Hadn't Ralof, when they were in line for execution, said something about how the names of Rayla's parents had been Elven names? And that her name was also Elven in nature? And here she was putting on Elven armor.

Now, Lokir didn't know much about the elves. But he did know that, because of the Great War, many Nords resented the elves, especially after the ban of Talos worship. But wasn't Rayla wearing an amulet of Talos around her neck, even as she began to strap on the artful Elven armor? It was almost enough to give him whiplash.

"Elven armor is better than steel armor," Rayla said, glancing over at Lokir as she strapped on her greaves.

Lokir _hmm_ed in curiosity. "Is it? I never knew."

Suddenly, as if someone had just slapped him, he remembered the spell book in his pack. Lokir suppressed a yelp of excitement and turned away from Rayla to snatch his knapsack off the ground. Behind him, he heard Rayla chuckle, but ignored her. He wasn't sure he could explain how learning magic felt to her.

The moment he had his hands around the spell tome, he placed it on top of the mysterious chest, next to the lantern. He hesitated for a moment before he began to read. The energy of this book felt…different, somehow. He thought it was strange that he could recognize the feeling of magicka after only casting two spells. Still, the spell book that the priestess had given him felt similar to the other spell, the—what was it called? The ward.

He opened the book and began to read again while Rayla put on her armor next to him. This time, when he read the book, he felt a strange warm feeling spread throughout his body, rather than a shocking one. The feeling had been the same when he'd read the book for the ward, but nowhere near as powerful.

Lokir wasn't sure how much time had passed when he finished the book, but by the time it crumbled into ashes, Rayla was fully outfitted in her Elven armor. It was strange to see her wear something other than the rusty Imperial armor he'd seen her in the day before, despite the fact that he'd just met her. The armor seemed to fit her perfectly—which he knew was strange, because most armor was made to be used by masses; unless one was rich, in which case the armor was crafted around them. But her armor looked like standard Elven armor, if the examples he had seen in blacksmitheries were any indication. She had also hooked an Elven helmet to her belt, next to a sheath that he assumed contained an Elven sword. On her back, covering her shoulders, was an Elven shield.

Rayla was watching him curiously, looking from where the ashes covering the chest were to the beginnings of a spell glowing on his hands. "That's interesting."

Lokir looked down at his hands and marveled at the strange, golden glow held there. With a thought, he managed to shut off his magicka, just like Danica had told him. Now he knew three spells. It was more than he ever thought possible. Yet he just _knew_ that this was part of him.

"I believe _interesting_ is too light a word," he said with a grin. "Try 'enthralling.'"

Rayla cocked an eyebrow at him. "That's a big word, for a thief."

He bristled at her generalization. "What? You think just because I steal things that I can't be educated? When I was twelve, I read all of the books in the _A Dance in Fire_ series _and _the _Feyfolken_ series." He didn't tell her that he was forced to read those books by Jouane as part of his education.

Rayla seemed taken aback by that for but a moment before she smirked.

"Eleven," she said simply.

His mouth flapped at her for a moment before he felt a sudden wave of frustration. By Mara, this woman was infuriating!

But then she pursed her lips and nodded at Lokir. "But you made your point. I apologize."

She…did?

Lokir shook his head as Rayla turned back to the contents of the chest. Confusing. Women were completely and utterly confusing. It was a good thing that he was getting paid for this.

"Lydia made breakfast," Rayla said, her head still in the chest. Her voice was somewhat muffled. "I told her to make you some as well."

"Oh, joy," Lokir replied. With his luck, the housecarl had probably poisoned it. Nonetheless, he made sure that all of his possessions were packed in his knapsack and that the bag's arm straps were firm before turning away from Rayla—whose head was still buried in the chest—and climbing up the ladder.

The first floor of Breezehome smelled considerably nicer than the basement. As Lokir climbed up from the cellar, he saw several plates of bacon and eggs set out on the large dining table nearby. Lydia was already dressed in her armor (and he wondered if she _ever_ took it off) and seated at the table, munching on a piece of toast.

"I assume that Rayla will be up in a moment?" Lydia said. She didn't even bother to hide her glare as Lokir stood and dusted himself off.

He nodded and sat down at the table, as far away from her as possible. While he didn't fully understand why she didn't like him, he had to admit that her cooking was extraordinary. He scooped himself a hardy handful of bacon and eggs and began to eat, not realizing how hungry he was until that moment. In fact, he hadn't eaten since the morning of the previous day.

Rayla ascended the ladder a minute or two later, and Lokir looked over just in time to see her stowing away an iron key with dozens of scratches on it. She shouldered her backpack and sat across from Lydia at the table.

"How are you this morning, Lydia?" Rayla asked as she grabbed a fistful of bacon. She glanced out one of the windows and must have realized how late they'd slept in. "Er…well, afternoon, I suppose."

"Fine, my Thane," Lydia replied. Then she frowned. "Are you…going somewhere?"

Lokir felt one of his eyebrows lift. Rayla hadn't told her own housecarl where they were going or what they were doing?

"Oh!" Rayla exclaimed through a mouthful of eggs. One of the yolks dribbled down her chin. While she may have been a capable warrior, she was a bit…of a slob. Lokir had to resist the urge to guffaw. "I'm sorry, Lydia. I was so tired last night that I didn't even remember to tell you we were going to Bleak Falls Barrow."

"We?" Lydia asked. She glanced at Lokir with barely concealed distaste.

"Yes, _we,_" Rayla responded, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. "Farengar asked me to do something for him in light of the dragon attack yesterday."

Lokir choked on his bacon. "Hurmph—_what?_" He didn't know that what they were doing had to do with more bloody _dragons!_ Why not just throw him on another chopping block if she wanted to get him killed?

"Oh, relax," she said, rolling her eyes. "All the crazy court wizard wants me to do is find some dusty stone that'll tell him where the dead dragons of old are buried."

"Ah," he said, relaxing a little bit. That wasn't _as_ bad. Still, she was paying him to follow her into an ancient Nordic burial site, and he knew that those were often infested with Draugr. He couldn't wait until he got his other half of the money. Who knew? Maybe all destiny had in store for them was to get a strange wizard an ancient map.

"Rayla, are you sure?" Lydia asked. Again, she looked at Lokir. "You've never gone into a crypt with someone else before."

Lokir took that as a good sign. If Rayla had been in other crypts by herself and had come out in one piece, then the work he'd have to do was minimal.

"It will be fine," Rayla replied, though her tone had taken on a slightly more serious tone. She cleared her throat, and it was gone. "Anyway, we have some business to attend to first."

She turned to Lokir, who was in the middle of stuffing a piece of toast into his mouth. She plopped her bag on the bench that they sat on and dug around a little bit, moving aside a bag of rations and a small journal before withdrawing two leather bracers and leather boots. "Put these on."

He swallowed his food and grabbed the pieces of armor from her. As he examined them, he realized the similarities between this armor and the Thieves Guild armor he had been given when he was sixteen. The leather was supple but sturdy, and would at least protect him from any glancing blows. There wasn't much that could be said for his torso because of the mage robes he was wearing (which would make any armor strapped overtop _very_ uncomfortable), but it was better than nothing.

For a moment, he considered switching to regular leather armor instead of the borrowed robes he had equipped, but then decided against it. For one, he wanted to honor the strange, bizarre wishes of the undead mage (which was too strange a sentence to even _think_). But mostly, he wanted the benefits of magicka that the robes would grant him. Even though he was a Nord, he knew enough about magic to know that mages almost always enchanted their clothing.

"Uh…thanks," he told Rayla. "When are…_we_ leaving?" By Arkay, he'd have to get used to saying "we."

"As soon as I finish eating," Rayla said. "I've already packed rations for us."

_Rations,_ Lokir thought. _Well, that sounds appetizing._

"But," she added, "you may want to keep your hood up on the way there."

"What?" he asked. "Why?"

"Because," Lydia suddenly interjected with a smirk. "Bleak Falls Barrow is awfully close to Riverwood. It would be a shame if someone were to recognize you, thief."

Lokir felt all the blood drain from his face. He wondered if Lucan would have told any of the guards down in Riverwood about his attempted thievery and if they would be able to recognize him, even after he'd cut his hair and changed his clothes.

"I'm done," Rayla suddenly announced, oblivious to Lokir's sudden fright. She stood from the bench, stretched, and asked, "Are you ready?"

"Yeah," Lokir said in a voice that was too high. "I've never been more ready."

Oh, if only that were true.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sorry this chapter is a little shorter. Also, I was going to update last night, but I had a speech to work on, so there's that. Hope you all enjoy!**

* * *

Rayla was not a fan of climbing up mountains, especially not right before a blizzard.

Sure, she'd done it before. She had a bad habit of getting lost whenever she ventured off of the roads—which was quite often—which usually meant that she had to do a bit of rock climbing. But the higher one got on a mountain, the colder it became, and the higher the risk of blizzards rose. As such, she had plenty of experience with knowing when a storm was about to hit. Like now, for instance.

She and Lokir had been on the road for at least two hours. It hadn't taken them long to reach Riverwood, but they'd immediately swung around and started to take the road up the mountain as soon as the town was in reach. With their different appearances, it was unlikely that any of the townspeople would recognize them, but it was best not to risk it. While Rayla was the Thane, it wasn't unknown for guards in small towns to bow to public opinion, especially when there were not many other guards around.

Rayla had just set her pack down on a rock for some rest when she looked up at the clouds. The sun was high in the sky (for it was about two in the afternoon), but she could see several dark clouds blowing in from the west. Dark clouds were typically a good indication of storms. And if they got caught in a blizzard on the side of a mountain, there was a very good chance that they could end up walking right off the edge without even knowing it in all the chaos.

She looked down at the map in her hands quickly as Lokir sat down heavily on another rock. According to the parchment, they were about an hour's walk from Bleak Falls Barrow. When she looked back up at the storm a few minutes away, she figured that the clouds would be above them in less than that.

She cursed and slung her pack back around her shoulders. She marched forward, grabbing Lokir's elbow right as he lifted a canteen of water to his mouth and dragged him after her.

"Wha—hey!" he exclaimed as he spilled water all over the front of his robes.

"We need to move!" Rayla said, letting the urgency she felt slip into her voice. "There's a storm coming."

Lokir stubbornly freed his arm from her grip and stopped walking. "Then why don't we find shelter? We've already been walking for a while."

Rayla growled in frustration. Clearly, this man was not well-traveled. "Look around, Lokir. Do you see any caves around here?" She gestured to the rocks cliffs around them exasperatedly. "We either get caught in the blizzard—which, I might add, we are _totally _unprepared for—or we can try to get to the barrow before that happens."

She saw that familiar fear flash over his face before he seemed to steel himself and nodded. Good.

"All right," he said. "Let's get to the blasted barrow, then."

Rayla nodded at him and rubbed her cold hands together. She hated climbing mountains.

* * *

When they finally reached the top of the accursed rufmountainside, Lokir was about ready to collapse. He'd never been very athletic (unless he was running from a guard, that is). He definitely was _not_ made for dashing up a steep mountain incline in freezing weather just to outrun a stupid storm.

And it wasn't like they could stop for any rest. With the threat of a blizzard looming over them, the only thing they could do was move. Besides, the higher up the mountain they got, the colder it became, until Lokir didn't want to risk standing still for fear of freezing to death. He was sure by the time that they reached the base of the large stone steps leading up to the barrow that his face was at least a little frostbitten.

Still, he couldn't help but gape at the barrow that they had suddenly found, despite the fact that snowflakes were already beginning to fall from the sky. Massive stone arches reached into the sky, looking to be at least one mammoth in diameter. The whole barrow rested on top of a massive stone pedestal, one that overlooked the countryside far below.

Oh, and it was also infested with bandits.

Lokir yelped in surprise as an iron arrow landed at his feet, sinking three inches into the snow. He had just enough time to look up and see a bandit aiming another arrow at his face before Rayla shoved him out of the way.

He landed in the snow nearby with a grunt and rolled over in time to see the warrior slamming her shoulder into the bandit's chest and knocking him to the ground. Another arrow flew at her, but merely splintered on the shield slung across her back. She paused for just a moment to slip her helmet onto her head, and then burst into action.

Now, Lokir had seen many warriors fight before. Whether he'd witnessed a tavern brawl, a duel, or even a bandit attack, he'd seen quite a few battles. However, he'd never seen someone fight like Rayla before. When he'd seen other Nords like himself fight before, they favored big, bulky weapons and hitting the opponent as many times as possible, usually sacrificing their own health as a result. But when Rayla fought…there seemed to be a sort of art to it.

She was surrounded by three bandits in less than a second. Two of them, fierce-looking Nords, carried steel swords, and the third was an Altmer who held a rather large orcish warhammer. The two with the swords lunged forward simultaneously, but Rayla slid the shield off of her back and into her left hand in a millisecond and blocked both blows—one on her shield, and the other on her sword. She pushed the swordsman to her left with her shield and then kicked the one in front of her in the groin before she swung her sword into his neck.

Rayla quickly spun out of the way as the Altmer bandit swung down his warhammer and bashed his nose with her shield as she did. Then she ducked the sword swing from the other swordsman, slammed the edge of the shield into his ribs, and then brought it up to crack into his chin.

She backed away suddenly, holding up her shield in a ready position, her sword parallel to the ground. Behind her helmet, Lokir could see that her face was firmly set in a fierce expression, but she didn't appear to be out of breath at all.

The bandits, on the other hand, seemed to have suffered a fair bit. The Altmer's nose was bleeding profusely, and the Nord with the sword was clutching his chest with his free hand. With just a few moves, she had crippled them.

Lokir realized that he was still lying on the ground, his mouth agape, and quickly scrambled to his feet. As the two bandits rushed Rayla again, he heard the scrape of boots overhead. He looked up, only to see that two bandits with bows were aiming for Rayla, who was in the middle of extracting her sword from the Nord's body.

Lokir may not have been a fearsome warrior, but he did see the danger in this situation. Now that Rayla only had one opponent, one with a slow and clumsy weapon, she would be moving around much less—which made her an easy target for archers. And if they had enough time to aim, they might be able to find the weak spots in her armor; most notably the face.

He wasn't entirely sure what had gotten into him. Perhaps he felt emboldened by Rayla's obvious mastery of swordplay, or maybe his confidence had increased with his sudden discovery of magic. It was probably more likely to say that his intelligence was lowered by the cold. One moment, he was standing there, staring at the archers as they pulled back on their bowstrings, and the next he had lightning crackling on his hands.

_Crack!_ Blue sparks of electricity exploded from both his hands, slamming into the archers loudly. The smell of burned hair and flesh mixed with the cold mountain air, and the two bandits leaped away, cursing loudly as Lokir burned their hands.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands into the air in victory. "I did it!"

But the bandits were back on their feet after a moment, looking at Lokir with hatred in their eyes. They both drew wicked-looking Nordic swords.

"Oh, Talos."

Then Lokir began to run, dashing up the stairs as fast as he could as the two bandits leaped down from the ledge to chase him. He jumped over the downed bodies of the bandits that Rayla had already killed and sprinted right past the warrior as she sliced the Altmer's throat.

"Rayla!" he yelled, nearly slipping and falling on his face as he turned left, around one of the massive arches. "Help!"

He heard a sudden _shlock!_ and then a thump_,_ and looked over his shoulder to see that she had downed one of the archers that had been after him.

_Thud!_ Lokir felt a sudden flash of pain across his shoulders as he slammed right into the base of one of the arches and fell to the ground, staring up at the sky before he even knew what was happening. A juddered heartbeat later, the upside-down face of one of the bandits appeared above him, sneering down at him cruelly. He raised his sword, and—

—and then Lokir suddenly remembered that Danica had given him another spell. Frantically, he called the ward spell to mind and focused on pouring as much magicka as he could into it. The cobalt blue shield burst into existence right as the bandit above him stabbed down with his sword.

_Clang!_ The ward caught the tip of the sword right before it would have sunk into Lokir's face. At the edge of his consciousness, he felt a resistance, but his panic made it hard to concentrate on anything but the point of a sword three inches from his nose.

And then it only got worse. With another loud _crack,_ the magical shield began to fracture, small fissures forming a spider web pattern across the blue surface. And the more Lokir panicked, the wider the cracks became.

Then came a sickening _squish_ sound, and the bandit above Lokir suddenly began dripping blood from his throat. A moment later, he fell to the ground, his sword in his hand, quite obviously dead.

Rayla crouched over Lokir a moment later, helping him stand as his ward spell finally dissipated.

"Come on, you icebrain," she told him. "We have to get inside."

He barely registered her words, but nodded along anyway as she led him inside Bleak Falls Barrow, where he was sure even more danger awaited.


	9. Chapter 9

Lokir jumped in surprise as the massive steel doors to the barrow _clang_ed shut behind them. He was somehow aware, in the back of his mind, that he was incredibly tense, and he fully expected another attack from one of the bandits to come at any moment. His lungs were burning from his mad dash, and almost felt like they would burst into flames at any moment.

"Lokir," someone said. Then, again, "Lokir!"

Rayla's face appeared before him, her green eyes sparkling in concern. In the darkness of the barrow, her facial scar was hardly visible.

"Lokir," she said for the third time. Her voice was perfectly calm. "You're having a panic attack. You need to relax."

Was he? He had a hard time forcing air into his lungs, and the image of that sword mere inches from his face kept spiraling through his mind. Ironically, the voice of his father also fought its way in there as well.

"_Panic is a thief's worst enemy,"_ he'd once told his son. "_Picking a pocket or a lock is harder than trying to steal a mammoth from a Giant's camp if you panic while you do it."_

"Just breathe," Rayla told him, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. The pressure helped to anchor him for a moment, and he tried to do what she said. "Just breathe with me, okay?"

She took loud, deep breaths, and Lokir did his best to follow her example. It took a few tries to master the breathing technique, but after a minute or two, he managed it. Once he realized that, he also recognized that the swirling of his mind had calmed considerably.

He was still plenty shaken. Sure, Lokir had been chased by guards (and a few hired thugs) more time than he cared to count, but he'd never been as close to death as he had just been. If it hadn't been for the magic that he'd recently learned, it would be his blood spilled out there, not those of the bandits. An even deeper appreciation for his newfound gift suddenly filled him as he relaxed his shoulders.

"Thank you," Lokir told Rayla as she removed her hand from his shoulder. He took a moment to lean on his knees to regain the rest of his lung capacity. "That was…terrifying."

"That was your first fight, wasn't it?" Rayla asked him. Her head was cocked at him, though not in a domineering or condescending way, as he had come to expect from most Nord warriors. It was actually…rather understanding.

Still, Lokir couldn't help the flush that spread across his face. He'd known other thieves who could fight their way out of a bad situation if they had to, and they were usually seen as the best of the best. Lokir couldn't even _look_ at a patch of blood without feeling nauseous. He nodded, looking away in embarrassment.

"You did well," she suddenly told him, clapping him on the shoulder.

He…_what?_ He'd run face-first into a column and had nearly been decapitated by a sword-wielding madman! How could that be described as _good?_

Lokir snapped his head back to look at her as she removed her Elven helmet and shook out her snow-white hair. "I did?"

Rayla nodded, and sent him an encouraging smile. The expression was strange to see mingled with her scar, but not unpleasant. In fact, Lokir thought it was the first time he had actually seen her smile around him, despite her easy-going exterior.

"I mean, you did take out those archers," she told him. "Thanks for that, by the way."

He was confused. He really hadn't even done much. "You saw that?"

She shrugged. "Not until you got them to chase you."

"You're welcome," he told her dryly, running a still-shaky hand through his short hair.

But her words did bolster his confidence a bit, even as he realized that had been her intent. After all, he wasn't dead, was he? And it was thanks to his limited grasp of magic. Perhaps he wasn't as untalented as his life experiences had led him to believe.

"Come on," Rayla told him, wiping some of the snow out of her hair. "We've got a lot more of this crypt to cover before we're in the clear." She began to step forward.

As soon as she said that, Lokir stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Wait."

The barrow they stood inside of was wide and circular in build, made from dark, ancient bricks that smelled stale. Two large, cylindrical pillars held the ceiling up, hiding the other half of the room. Two dead skeevers sat a few feet away. However, the thing that had given Lokir pause was the flickering light of a campfire and the smell of smoke coming from the other side of the room.

It was probably nothing. If there _were_ more bandits in the hall, they would have heard Rayla trying to calm Lokir down (she had a rather loud voice). That is, unless the crackling of the fire was loud on the other side of the room was amplified by the strange acoustics of the room, making it hard for any bandits to hear them. Or maybe he was just being paranoid.

As he looked at Rayla and saw her furrowed brow, he decided that he wasn't that lucky. Whatever was on the other side of the columns, she had obviously heard it as well.

Lokir held up a finger to his lips, and Rayla nodded. Then he began to creep forward, staying low and close to the ground as he'd been taught. He moved his feet carefully, but there wasn't much debris for him to step on. Behind him, he heard Rayla attempting to sneak after him, but she was very clearly terrible at it. Her armor kept clinking and making metallic hissing sounds as she moved, so much so that Lokir's jaw was in danger of locking in place after only a few moments.

Fortunately, it didn't seem to matter. Lokir stopped once he reached the edge of one of the columns, for one of the bandits was speaking.

"When is that stupid little dark elf supposed to get back?" a deep male voice asked.

Lokir leaned his head around the side of the column to peer at the two bandits sitting in front of the campfire. One was a large, burly man with not a wisp of hair on his head, and the other was a muscular woman wielding an iron mace.

The woman sighed. "Be patient. Arvel said he knew how to work the golden claw, so he'll figure it out. Unless you want to go into the crypt and look after him?"

Lokir felt a chill at the mention of the golden claw, even as the other bandit crossed his arms.

"I have full confidence in the knife-eared gray-skin."

Behind him, Lokir suddenly felt Rayla stiffen, and when he looked back at her, he saw that her face was twisted in rage. It looked unnatural on her face, and there was a dangerous gleam to her eyes that made her pupils almost _glow_ in the darkness of the barrow.

And before he could stop her, she was stepping forward, sword drawn, directly into the line of sight of the two bandits.

"You know," she said, anger cracking like a whip in her voice, "you really should be careful what you say. You never know who might be listening."

For a split second, the two bandits just gaped at her sudden appearance, and then they were on their feet and drawing their weapons in a heartbeat. Hesitantly, Lokir stood and called the one offensive spell he knew to his hands.

But Rayla did not attack. Instead, she planted her sword tip in the ground and leaned on it casually. Her face was still plenty angry, but there was a coldness to it now that Lokir didn't like. Before the other bandits even took a step, Rayla held up a hand and began to speak.

"Now, now," she said. "We don't want any more bloodshed, do we?"

She shifted her sword nonchalantly, clearly illuminating the blood that had yet to dry on the surface. From behind the pillar, Lokir thought he could see the eyes of the bandits flick from her sword to the door behind them as they made the obvious conclusion.

"You're bluffing," the woman said, though she didn't sound too sure.

"Am I?" Rayla asked, her face perfectly blank. While she may have appeared relaxed to the casual observer, Lokir could see how tightly she was gripping her sword hilt and how tense her body was. This woman was _daring _the bandits to make a move, to give her any excuse to decimate them like she had their friends outside. He found it remarkable that she was able to hold herself back at all with all the anger that he had just seen on her face.

"Now," she continued, her mouth twisting into a sneer. "You are both going to leave here, never return, and turn yourself in to the nearest guards."

"And why would we do that?" the man asked. He seemed a little less fazed than the woman, but he still appeared plenty intimidated by Rayla.

"Because if you don't," she said, her voice suddenly quiet but full of that simmering anger, "I'll give you the same treatment that I gave your friends outside."

Both bandits tensed. For a tense moment, Lokir was sure that they were going to attack her, and he raised his hands to offer her any assistance that he could.

But they never did. The man was the first to move, muttering something incoherent under his breath as he sheathed his sword and turned to leave, gesturing for the woman to follow him. After a glare directed at Rayla, the other barbarian followed suit.

"And learn some manners while you're at it," Rayla added, not looking back as they walked past her.

The bandits both tensed, but neither made a move, especially when they saw Lokir crouching in the shadows with magic crackling on his hands. He watched them all the way until the door, and the woman had the courage to send an offensive gesture their way before the man dragged her outside. The door shut behind them with a loud _clang._

Lokir relaxed immediately, though he didn't turn his back on the door for a full minute. When he was sure that the bandits were not going to return, he faced Rayla, only to find that she was in the exact same position as she was before, though her jaw was clenched and she was staring at the wall across from her.

"Uh…Rayla?" Lokir asked, creeping forward carefully.

She physically _flinched_, as if she had forgotten that he was present. But when her eyes flicked to him, it was _his_ turn to flinch. Though she hadn't laid a finger on the bandits, Lokir could see just how desperately she had wanted to hurt them in her eyes. The green there seemed…darker. Haunted, somehow.

And then the look was gone, like a passing wind, and she was back to herself.

"Come along, Lokir," she said, sheathing her sword. "We're not even close to finished."

* * *

As it turned out, they were closer to finished than originally expected, because after only an hour or two of exploring the crypt, they were both exhausted.

The final straw came when they realized that the path they'd been taking for the past half-hour was a dead-end. Lokir had already been fatigued, mostly due to the absence of adrenaline after the fight outside the barrow. That, coupled with the legends of Draugr that walked burial crypts, made him want to sit down and rest for a while. So when he saw the dead end and realized that they would have to walk even further just to get back to a normal path, he plopped his bag down on top of a stone that formed part of the dead end and crossed his arms stubbornly as Rayla wiped some dust off her forehead.

"Tired already, thief?" she asked, though her shoulders were just as slouched as his.

"We've been going nonstop for four hours," Lokir huffed. "I'm _exhausted._ Aren't you, warrior?" His manners had a bad habit of dissipating when he was tired.

She seemed surprised by his blunt language, but after a moment she shrugged and set down her own pack as well. "Very well."

Lokir sat on the floor, not caring about the moss or dust that coated the ground as he leaned his back against one of the rocks. If only the others could see him now! While most Nords would have been hesitant to sift through an ancient burial crypt, a thief like Lokir saw it as an opportunity. Most Nords were buried with a considerable amount of money nearby. Still, he also knew that it would be the death of him if he wasn't careful. It was a good thing that Rayla was with him, otherwise he probably would have managed to either get hopelessly lost in the barrow or somehow triggered a dormant trap. They'd been lucky in avoiding anything of the like so far, but that didn't mean that there wouldn't be any further in. All he wanted was to get out of the blasted crypt and back in a warm bed. Preferably one that wasn't in a Thane's basement.

Rayla busied herself with cutting up some old roots that had penetrated the walls of the crypt to use as firewood, and an exhausted Lokir watched it curiously for a minute or two before he realized that she would probably snap at him if he didn't help out at least a little bit. So, dragging himself up a little bit, he began gathering loose stones that they could use as a sort of fire pit. While Rayla finished gathering the makeshift firewood, he piled the rocks in a rough circle a few feet away.

She nodded at him in approval and began setting the roots down in a strange pattern that he realized was rather adept. While the roots were shaped oddly and had a habit of rolling over each other as she placed them, she quickly had them set up in a pattern that would be excellent for burning.

"Usually," she grunted as she began to dig through her pack for a flint and steel, "roots aren't very good for burning, because they're green and give off a lot of smoke. But these ones are dead and dry." It seemed as if she were saying this to herself, because she didn't look at Lokir once as she searched the inside of her bag.

Lokir looked down at his hands, then at the pile of wood waiting to be burned, and then back at his hands. Why not?

_Crack!_ He shot a small amount of lightning at the pile of wood and it immediately ignited. Rayla didn't flinch at the sudden flames that rose from the pile, but she did lower her pack and look down at the warm campfire that had just burst into existence with surprise. After a moment of hesitation, she nodded at him.

"I knew it was a good idea to keep you around," she said.

Lokir scoffed and began to warm his hands over the fire as she delved back into her bag and pulled out a small frying pan and a package of salt-preserved deer meat.

"Rations," she told him as she unwrapped the meat and saw his confused look. Then she chuckled. "What? Did you think I meant moldy jerky or bread or something?"

He looked down, a bit embarrassed. "Maybe."

Rayla snorted and placed the skillet over the fire. "Well," she said, sprinkling some sort of spice on the meat, "I may not be as talented as Lydia at cooking, but I wouldn't say my food is _that_ terrible."

It wasn't like it made much of a difference. Lokir was so hungry that he could have eaten a mammoth raw—which he'd heard was supposed to taste horrible. He had to force himself to look away from the flames as Rayla began to cook the meat, lest his will break and he reached straight into the fire to grab the raw meat.

There was silence for a few minutes, save for the sizzle of the venison on the pan and the occasional crackle of the flames. Lokir thought about trying to make conversation with the warrior across from him several times, but what could he say? They were completely different people, and it wasn't like he'd offered to come with her out of the kindness of his heart.

Eventually, it was her who broke the silence as she stirred the pan with a long stick. Her face seemed paler because of the light of the fire, and she looked slightly uncomfortable as she spoke.

"So what's your story, Lokir?" she asked, sitting back just slightly. She looked at him with curious eyes.

He felt his brow furrow. He wasn't sure he had a _story,_ per se. It was more like…a poorly written pamphlet. "What do you mean?"

"You know," she said, shrugging. "Where did you grow up, what gets you up in the morning, things like that." Rayla scratched the bottom part of her scar. "I figure if we're traveling together, we should know a little bit about each other, at least."

"Oh," Lokir replied. That didn't seem too harmless. And to be honest, no one had ever really asked him something like that before. In the criminal underworld, it was best not to ask too many questions. But now, it felt…nice.

He stretched his arms above his head as he thought about an answer to her question. He really wasn't even that interesting; most thieves weren't. The ones that he'd managed to work up the courage to talk to had all been forced into a life of crime by taxes that were too high or in just order to escape the monotony of everyday life.

"Well," he eventually said, "My father dropped me off to a caretaker in Rorikstead when I was but a toddler. He had a bounty on his head, so he dropped me off there so that I would be protected."

"He was a thief as well, I presume?" Rayla asked, flipping over the meat in the pan with the stick from before. Lokir expected judgement in her voice—considering her fairly obvious view on thieves—but instead all he heard was amusement.

"...yes," he said carefully. She didn't seem nearly as heavy-handed as she had been before. Perhaps it was just because they were in private.

He sighed, after a moment. "But he's much better than I am."

Rayla looked up at him with a skeptical eyebrow and a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "That's a…strange thing to be proud of."

Was he proud? He supposed that he was, because his father was one of the best in the Thieves Guild. He must have let some of that slip into his voice.

He shrugged and honestly replied, "Well, I don't have much else to be proud of him for. I didn't even really know him all that well until I was sixteen."

That got more of a reaction out of her, though that hadn't been Lokir's intention. She sat up, temporarily neglecting the food in the fire. That strange, fierce look was in her eyes again, though she didn't look as angry as she had when she was intimidating the two bandits. But when she spoke, it was with a soft, kind voice.

"Your father abandoned you?" she asked.

For a strange moment, Lokir was fascinated by her eyes. How could simple, green eyes hold such fierceness and such gentleness at the same time? This woman was full of conundrums. He wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Then he realized what she had actually asked, and indignancy filled him.

"He did not abandon me!" he denied, even though he felt a flash of uncertainty inside him. "He…merely…he was protecting me!"

Even though he surely would have been able to clear his bounty after a month or two. And he hadn't returned…for thirteen years.

Lokir had _not_ been abandoned.

Right?

Rayla seemed to realize that she had hit a sore spot. That look in her eye disappeared, and she went back to normal.

"What about your caretaker?" she asked. "What was he like?"

He smiled as he remembered the man. He'd much rather remember that. "His name was Jouane Manette. He was old back then, so he's probably even older now." He chuckled at the thought of Jouane hobbling around Rorikstead with the help of a cane. "He used to make me farm with the others, but that hadn't worked out too well."

That elicited another small smile from her. "Yeah, I know how that feels."

Now it was Lokir's turn to feel curious. Had she been forced to perform tedious chores as well?

"What about you?" he asked. "What were your parents like?"

He physically _saw_ the wall slam down between them. Immediately, her body became more tense and her eyes cold, and she looked away from him and back into the fire, drawing back the skillet quickly. For a moment, Lokir was put-off. Her reaction was completely different from the kind, emotionally-open woman he had seen so far.

"They're dead," she said harshly.

A moment later, she was cutting up pieces of the meat and shoving a plate of it in his direction.

"Eat up."

Lokir did his best not to show his surprise at her sudden reaction, but it was like trying to sneak past a Giant in broad daylight. The next few minutes were filled with an uncomfortable silence, until he began to eat the meat as quietly as he could.

He much preferred the woman he'd been with just a few minutes ago. He _really_ hoped that the rest of their journey wouldn't be like this, or he would lose his mind.

As he tried his best not to stare at her, he wondered if he already had.


	10. Chapter 10

By the time Lokir woke in the morning (or whatever time it was), Rayla was back to her chipper self. When he sat up groggily, she was already pacing around their small campsite, stretching in preparation as she packed up her things. There was no trace of the coldness she'd shown the night before on her face. In fact, she'd even made a small breakfast of leftover meat and a small wedge of goat cheese. He wondered if it was a sort of apology for her actions, because she certainly didn't say anything to him about what had happened before they'd gone to sleep.

"What's the plan for today?" Lokir asked as he reached for the small, wooden plate.

"Get out of here as soon as possible," Rayla replied, rolling her neck. "Small barrows like this usually don't take much longer than a day to go through."

"_Small?_" he declared. "This place is small?" When she shrugged and nodded in response, he asked, "Just how many tombs have you _been _through?"

Rayla straightened for a moment, counting on her fingers. Her brow was furrowed as she tried to remember. Eventually, she said, "Oh, probably about twenty or so."

_Twenty?_ Lokir thought in shock as he choked on the cheese. He really shouldn't eat and talk to this woman at the same time.

She seemed amused by his reaction. "You'd be surprised how many people have asked me to go into a Nordic tomb to get something for them. One time someone asked me to get their lucky _hairbrush_."

He scanned her face for a moment, trying to determine whether or not she was serious. "You're joking."

She smirked. "Nope. You know, for undead creatures, the Draugr were surprisingly protective of that thing."

Finally, he chuckled. Just the mere thought of this woman delving into a dangerous crypt for a mere hairbrush was amusing in every single way. Especially when he thought of the Draugr guarding that particular item.

As he finished his breakfast, he realized that he'd slept well, ironically. Perhaps it was just because the part of the barrow that they were in was filled with nothing but dust, so he had little to worry about. Perhaps he had simply been too tired for nightmares to muscle their way into his brain.

"When do you think we'll see some Draugr?" he asked, slinging his pack across his shoulders as he stood.

Rayla hesitated. She seemed to be evaluating whether or not to tell him. Finally, she settled for, "It should be soon. It's rather odd that we haven't seen any, yet."

What a comforting thought. Lokir did his best to steel his will as Rayla placed her helmet on her head and stepped over the dead campfire. He did have magic now, after all. He wasn't _entirely _helpless. He hoped.

* * *

They made it about another hour before they ran into any trouble. And to be honest, Rayla was sort of relieved. A burial crypt without anything attacking her was too strange.

They were walking down a dark stone hallway filled with treacherous roots and stone rubble. Luckily, Rayla had found an unused torch on a sconce a while back, and with Lokir as a human flint-and-steel, it was much easier to see where they were going. Unfortunately, it also meant that the crackle of flames was so loud in her ear that she didn't notice anything was amiss until Lokir stopped her.

"Wait," he said in a hushed voice. He squinted into the darkness, as if that could somehow help him hear better, and then said, "I think I hear someone."

Rayla frowned at him. How could he hear _anyone_? She certainly couldn't. Still, Lokir'd had several insightful moments like this in the past, and he hadn't been wrong so far. It couldn't hurt to be more careful anyway.

So she crept forward, stepping carefully over the roots. Sure enough, a minute later she heard a voice, as clear as day.

"Is…is someone coming? Is that you Harknir? Bjorn? Soling?" a male voice asked. "I need help!"

That clinched it for Rayla. Lokir was very good at sniffing out trouble.

As much as her instincts wanted her to rush forward to find the source of the voice that needed help, Rayla held herself back. She'd learned the hard way to be more careful in Nord burial crypts. She kept going at a snail's pace until they reached the end of the hallway, and she instantly knew what the danger was.

The hall was coated in thick, sticky spider webs that smelled of disease. Gigantic egg sacs sat in the corners, along with sickly yellow cocoons that she knew contained past victims.

"Uh," Lokir said from behind her. "D-d-do big webs mean a big spider?"

_Usually,_ she thought, but she didn't tell him that. When she looked back at him, his face was as pale as ghost under his hood. It probably wouldn't be best to tell him about what she knew waited for them. He'd probably bolt, and she couldn't waste time tracking him down again. That is, if he didn't wander right into one of the traps that the old Nords had put in their resting place.

But she also knew that he wouldn't settle for no answer, so she stretched the truth a bit.

"Not always," she said, walking up to a doorway that was so thickly coated in spider webs that it was unpassable. She held up her torch to the webs and watched them burn away, already feeling adrenaline flooding her veins. She _hated_ frostbite spiders.

When she had burned a sufficient hole, large enough for her to walk through, she made sure her helmet was firmly in place and strode forward, bracing herself for what she would find.

The large room she stepped into was covered in even more spider webs and egg sacs than the hallway. The smell of disease was so overwhelming that she had to cover her mouth for a moment. A small trapdoor sat in the middle of the room, though it appeared to be nonfunctional. Further, at the opposite wall, a Dunmer bandit was suspended in a massive spider web. This must have been the one that the bandits from the day before had mentioned.

"What? Who are you?" he exclaimed when he saw Rayla (and Lokir cowering behind her). Then, before she could respond, "Oh, never mind. Cut me down before that thing gets us!"

Rayla cursed. The moment the Dunmer had opened his mouth, he'd apparently woken the _giant_ frostbite spider that slumbered overhead. Bandits were all idiots.

She drew her sword and shield as the spider dropped to the floor. Eight pairs of black eyes stared at her, full of malice. She shuddered just looking at the fine hairs that covered its red-colored body, and the deadly poison that dripped from its two pincers.

"Lokir," she said in a perfectly calm voice as the spider stared at them. She had enough experience with the beasts to know that the slightest vocal change could set them off. "Get behind me and blast this thing with as much lightning as you can when I say."

She didn't look back at him as he quietly stammered out a confirmation. She tightened her grip on her sword.

"Kill it!" the dark elf exclaimed.

If she'd had time, she would have sighed. Bandits were worse than thieves.

The frostbite spider _leaped_ forward, propelled by its eight powerful legs. Out of instinct, Rayla dug her heels into the dirt-covered floor of the room, dropped her torch, and raised her shield in front of her. A split-second later, the head of the spider slammed into the metal plate, hissing in displeasure. She stumbled, but did not fall, and lashed out with her sword as soon as she regained her balance.

Black blood spurted from the head of the spider, and she jumped back as it attempted to bite her with its pincers. The blasted things were so big that they might be able to pierce right through her armor. Luckily, spiders weren't too smart. She ducked a ball of spit—no doubt fully saturated with poison—and slashed right for the creature's poisonous barbs.

A horrible hiss filled the chamber as the spider stumbled backward, dark blood and poison pouring from its face.

"Now, Lokir!" Rayla yelled, jumping backward. Spiders always went berserk after you sliced off their pincers.

Almost immediately, two lines of lightning erupted from behind her as the terrified thief unleashed his magic. The electricity crashed into the spider with deadly intensity, actually forcing the giant frostbite spider back a few paces as it wailed in agony.

And then it was over, and the large creature's body was left twitching on the floor as the lightning wore off. Blasted spiders.

"Ha!" Lokir exclaimed. Rayla turned around to find him pumping his fist triumphantly. "I did it!"

Any other Nord warrior would have reminded him that she'd had something to do with the killing of the spider too, but Rayla had never been one to hog glory. Besides, the novice mage needed a confidence boost. Instead, she sent him an encouraging smile and said, "Good job."

He had that strange, boyish look in his eyes as he grinned right back at her. It was charming, in a strange way.

Rayla turned back to the body of the spider and kicked it with her foot once—just to be sure—and stepped over it to address the issue of the ignorant elf. What had the bandits called him yesterday? Arvel.

But before she could even say anything, the dark elf was lurching forward in his web and crying, "You did it! You killed it. Now cut me down before anything else shows up."

Rayla sighed, trying to remember the details of what she and Lokir had overheard the bandits from the day before say. "Where's the…golden claw?" It had been golden, hadn't it? She didn't think she'd come across a golden one in her travels, at least.

Arvel's red eyes were frantic as he looked down at her. She wondered just how long he'd been up there to warrant such a panic, or if the elf was just arachnophobic. "Yes, the claw," he began to babble. "I know how it works. The claw, the markings, the door in the Hall of Stories. I know how they all fit together! Help me down, and I'll show you. You won't believe the power the Nords have hidden there."

Behind her, Rayla heard Lokir snort, and she had to resist the urge to do so herself. She'd been through plenty of tombs and knew all about how the claws worked. Really, the bandit was offering her nothing. But she wouldn't consider the possibility of just _leaving _him there. For one, that would be cruel. For another, he was blocking the way through.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Fine. Let me see if I can cut you down." The chances were high that he'd make a run for it as soon as he was free, but there was nothing she could do.

She hooked her shield onto her back and raised her sword. As she started to saw through the thick webs, she heard Lokir step forward beside her.

"This golden claw," he said, peering at the dark elf with skeptical brown eyes. "Where did you get it?"

Rayla glanced up at Arvel curiously and saw the Dunmer pale just slightly. "Nowhere," he said. "Nowhere important. Now, if you could just cut me down…"

"I'm working on it," she grumbled. As she spoke, a few more strands snapped, and Arvel's body lurched as his bonds loosened.

"You're almost there!" he exclaimed, and she could hear the greedy excitement in his voice.

She hesitated as she neared the last few strands of web, but shook her head and continued.

_Snap!_ The whole web structure collapsed, sending Arvel crashing to the floor. Lokir reached down to help the dark elf up, but the bandit was on his feet in a split second—and running.

"You fool!" he cried, already at the doorway of the second room beyond. "Why should I share the treasure with anyone!"

Rayla sighed, frowning at Lokir, who was looking at her with wide eyes. "Wow. What a complete and utter _shock._ What_ever_ shall I do?"

Then she began to run after the bandit, because really what choice did she have?

As it turned out, she didn't have to run far, because Arvel was (surprise!) an idiot. In his haste to get away from Rayla—who'd had absolutely no intention of harming him unless provoked—he'd wandered right into a den of Draugr.

By the time Rayla and Lokir had caught up with him, one of the undead creatures had already impaled the dark elf on their ancient sword. Arvel looked over at them, blood gurgling out of his mouth, before he fell over onto the floor, quite dead.

…and then the Draugr realized that they had two more potential victims, and the fight began anew.

Wonderful.

* * *

Lokir was thoroughly exhausted by the time they reached the infamous puzzle door of the crypt.

Once Arvel had been killed (the thought of which still nauseated him), it seemed that every single Draugr in Bleak Falls Barrow had awakened. With their gray skin and shambling walks, along with their glowing blue eyes, they were enough to inhabit his nightmares for months if that slot hadn't already been filled by the terrible dragon from Helgen.

However, he'd also gained a better understanding of his magic as they'd fought (well, Rayla fought, and Lokir had helped out every once in a while) their way through the tomb. For one, he knew when his magicka was close to exhausted—he'd feel light-headed and jittery, like he'd accidentally downed too much coffee on an empty stomach. For another, he discovered this…familiar feeling about magic. It hadn't been apparent before, but when he'd killed the frostbite spider, the feeling had reared its head for the first time, like a weird sort of déjà vu. He wasn't sure when, or even how, but he'd performed magic, or perhaps felt it, at least once before. Beyond that, it felt as natural as putting on clothes in the morning. He even surprised himself with how he called to mind the healing spell that Danica had given him without thinking about it to heal a deep scratch he'd received thanks to a barely-avoided trap.

Rayla seemed to feel the exhaustion too, though she didn't let it show on her face. However, by the time they reached the massive "Hall of Stories," her shoulders were slouched underneath her armor and she seemed to be walking at a slower pace than before. Still, she seemed to be less tired than Lokir. He'd decided about thirty minutes ago that he was too out of shape to be doing this.

Nonetheless, he couldn't help but gape at the large hallway that they'd just entered. On either side of them, massive, intricately carved stone tablets hung on the walls, showing large stories. Lokir wished he could have stopped to analyze them further—that is, until he remembered that he was in the middle of a Draugr-infested barrow.

However, he couldn't help his curiosity from spilling out of his mouth. "Who is that?" he asked Rayla, pointing to a particularly large image of a person in a strange mask, standing over the ancient Nords. The image of that person appeared several times in the Hall, as he saw as they walked through it.

Rayla turned her head to look at the picture he had gestured to, stepping over a large dead root as she did. She cocked her head at the image for a moment before she spoke.

"That," she said, "is a Dragon Priest."

Lokir frowned. The term rung a bell, but he hadn't exactly been exposed to all of the same legends that other Nords had. All he knew was that the phrase "Dragon Priest" stirred fear inside him.

"What…is that, again?" he asked, staring at the images of the priest as they continued to walk. He felt a chill, almost as if the person engraved in the stone was staring back at him.

Rayla stopped walking, and Lokir looked back to find her staring at him.

"You don't know?" she asked, looking surprised. She held up another torch that she had found and peered at him.

Lokir flushed under her gaze. He hated feeling ignorant. And he wasn't sure how to feel about the way she was analyzing him like that.

"My…Jouane is a Breton," he said, scratching the back of his neck and looking away from her, feeling suddenly awkward. "I didn't really have access to normal Nord legends as a child."

"No, it's fine," Rayla said, lowering her torch almost sheepishly. "I didn't either. I only learned about them through experience." She nodded at one of the illustrations of a Dragon Priest on the wall. "Back when dragons ruled the earth, there were a few men who worshipped them like they were gods." She scratched her face, like she was trying to remember something. "I _believe _that the dragons treated them like warlords, and they were given powers in return, or something of the sort. Some of them—the really powerful ones—managed to evade death and become undead."

Lokir processed that information slowly, but his brain screeched to a halt when he recognized the words _undead_ and _experience._

"Are you telling me that you've _fought _one of these things before?!" he demanded, looking between the illustration of the ancient priest on the wall and the young woman before him. How in the hell—?

Rayla simply shrugged in response, walking past him. In the light of the torch in her hand, the end of the Hall of Stories was clearly visible.

Lokir shook his head as he walked after her. Conundrum. This woman was a complete and utter conundrum.

Rayla dug the golden claw that she'd retrieved from Arvel's body out of her bag when she reached the end of the hall. A massive stone door stood in front of her, and Lokir stared at it in awe. There were three rings embedded in the door, each engraved with a different symbol, and they looked loose enough to be turned. Oddly, a strange, golden slot with three holes in it sat underneath the rings. When he looked between the claw in Rayla's hands and the slot, something in his head clicked.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, excited about his discovery. "It's a key! I get it!"

Rayla blinked at him. "I…yeah. Did you just figure that out now?"

He flushed again as he nodded, figuring everything was slow on the uptake again, but he was surprised by the grumpy look that suddenly overtook her face.

"It took me an hour to figure that out the first time…" he heard her mutter.

He grinned.

She continued to mutter incomprehensible things to herself unhappily as she looked between the bottom of the golden claw and the rings on the door. After a moment, she gave the claw to him for him to hold as she used both hands to turn the rings.

Lokir looked down at the golden claw in his hands, impressed by the remarkable craftsmanship. He grimaced as he remembered what he'd heard before about it. He looked up at Rayla, then down at the claw, and figured that she'd probably crucify him if he didn't tell her—or worse, hold back his other half of the money.

"Urm…Rayla?" he said hesitantly, as she aligned the first ring to have the symbol of a bear on it.

"Yes, Lokir?" she asked, frowning in concentration as she moved on the the second ring.

He hesitated, then decided that he might as well tell her. "I…think I know where Arvel got this thing."

That got her attention. She stopped in the middle of moving the second ring to look at him with suspicion in her green eyes. She sighed.

"...how?" she asked. She sounded skeptical.

Lokir winced in preparation. "Er, when I was _browsing _Lucan's shop—"

"You mean _stealing from_," Rayla supplied in a flat voice. She didn't sound impressed with his behavior.

"Um. Yeah." He scratched at his collar awkwardly. "I overheard them talking about how their golden claw had been stolen a week ago."

For a moment, she stared at him blankly. Then she turned back to the wall, chuckled to herself, and smiled a small smile, shaking her head. She resumed messing with the puzzle door after a moment.

Lokir frowned, confused. Wasn't she mad at him? "What?"

As she lined up the second ring to show a moth, she replied, "This whole 'destiny' thing is kicking me in the teeth." She laughed again, turning the final ring. "I was _just _wondering who the bandits had stolen the claw from, because they were clearly too dumb to find it themselves."

Oh. Well. That _was _sort of amusing. And frightening.

"There we go!" Rayla said, making the final ring show an owl. She held out her hand to Lokir, and he placed the golden claw in it. She inserted the three claws of the metal device into the slot and turned it.

The effect was immediate. The door began to rumble, making Lokir jump back in shock as the rings suddenly all aligned themselves to show the symbol of the owl. A moment later, the door began to rumble even louder as it slowly lowered itself into the ground.

"Great," Rayla said, cracking her knuckles before she stowed the golden claw back in her pack. "We're almost done."

"Oh, thank Talos," Lokir groaned as she stepped into the cavern beyond. He ignored the snort she gave him as he followed, and gaped at his surroundings for the third time in the past ten minutes.

The cavern they'd entered was massive, complete with natural stalactites and stalagmites that reached from ground to ceiling. A small underground creek cut through the middle of the cave, and a stone bridge led over it to a strange sight.

A massive wall carved with strange symbols carved on it sat at the end of the cavern, behind a large stone table and an ancient chest. Lokir felt something very strange in his bones as they slowly approached the strange wall. There was a sort of _pulse_ emanating from the wall, growing more insistent with every step that they took. Even though he was a novice mage, and he knew it, he thought he recognized the pulse as magicka. It reminded him of the feeling he received whenever he performed a spell, and of the familiarity that the casted spell brought him.

It turned out that he wasn't the only one who had felt it. When he looked at Rayla, she had an almost _eager_ expression on his face. At first, he thought it was just because they had finally reached the end of the crypt and could find the Dragonstone that the court wizard of Whiterun had asked them for. Then, when her pace picked up and he realized that she was headed straight for the word wall, he grew confused. The closer they got to the word wall, the more intense the pulse became, until it was beating against Lokir's very being. He could hardly force himself up the steps leading up to the wall, but he did, his curiosity driving him. That, and Rayla was already halfway to the circular wall.

Eventually, he could go no further. He paused, breathing heavily as he leaned against the dark metal bench near the word wall. Something was very strange about this wall. It radiated no malicious intent, yet it seemed to be trying to _force_ Lokir back with every confusing pulse of its energy.

Yet, Rayla seemed to be immune to the strange magic of the word wall. Instead, she stepped toward the strange, ancient artifact, with that same eagerness that he'd seen in her before. Couldn't she feel the power of this thing? Was Lokir simply going mad?

It didn't appear so. Perhaps it was different because Rayla didn't have any magicka, but she was able to step up to the surface of the wall with no difficulty. She approached several symbols in particular, ones that seemed to form a single word, if the spaces between symbols were any indication. Immediately, the pressure that Lokir felt seemed to fade, like it was going somewhere.

…like it was going into Rayla?

_Crack!_

Lokir jumped in fright as the table he'd been leaning against suddenly _shifted_, and he realized the horrible mistake he'd made as he scrambled away. It wasn't a _table_. It was a coffin. And a massive Draugr was climbing out of it.

This particular Draugr was at least twice the size of the other Draugr that they'd come across so far in the crypt, and a massive ebony battleaxe rested across its back. It wore the ancient armor of the other Draugr, but it seemed heavier, somehow, and it was also wearing a large steel helmet on its head that had two massive horns reaching up toward the ceiling.

Luckily, Lokir wasn't _completely_ helpless. He had the Sparks spell called to his hands in a moment, and in his fear he hurled as much lightning as he could at the gigantic Draugr.

It merely sizzled off the undead creature's armor pathetically, not harming the thing at all. As Lokir's eyes widened, the Draugr looked down at its armor and then back at him.

Then it seemed to _laugh_, a sound like a bag of gravel being run over by a cart. Then deep, horrible words came out of its mouth. "_Bolog Aaz, Mal Lir!_"

Oh, Lokir was so totally and utterly _screwed._

He stumbled backward as the Draugr drew the battleaxe from off its back. Its horrible, glowing blue eyes glared at Lokir even as he nearly tripped over a rock behind him. With a _whoosh_, the creature swung its axe in a wide arc, and it was only Lokir's clumsy jump to the side that saved him.

"_Rayla!_" he shouted, his voice cracking in fear.

No response. When he looked over at the warrior, he found that she was still standing in front of the word wall, staring intensely at that strange, single word like it was a dragon that had suddenly swooped out of the sky. She was utterly oblivious to what was happening around her. Had she gone mad?

A sudden, intense flash of pain across his stomach brought Lokir back to the rather terrifying task at hand. He jumped backward as the Draugr in front of him laughed again, its battleaxe red with his blood. When Lokir looked down, he found that a bit of red was seeping through his robes. The Draugr had cut him?

Immediately, a wave of nausea and terror swept over him, and that made him even clumsier. In his haste to get away from the undead monster, he had accidentally stepped too close to the stairs. As the Draugr spun, ready to put him out of his misery, misfortune struck. Lokir's boot slipped on the slick stone steps, and he had just a moment to think, _Oh, Talos,_ before gravity seized him and he went crashing down the stairs.

His world became a flurry of pain and bruises as he slammed into each step with brutal force. He heard the Draugr laugh above him one more time before his head struck a stone and he saw no more.

"_Lokir!" his father called him. "Lokir, where did you get to?"_

_The young Lokir giggled as he hid in the small cupboard of the house. Dad would never find him here. It was the perfect hiding spot. Even though Lokir had never actually been there before, he knew in his three-year-old bones that this was the best spot in the house. He held his breath as he heard footsteps pass his concealed place and then tried his best not to giggle. _

_However, he quickly grew bored. The boxes he was sitting on were hard and uncomfortable, and the cupboard smelled of mold and must. After about a minute that seemed to last a lifetime, Lokir decided that he might as well begin to look through the boxes. Dad never let him in here anyway; perhaps there were sweets lying about?_

_Motivated by a sudden hunger for candy, Lokir turned around and lifted the lid of the chest he'd just been sitting on. It was heavy, for his toddler arms, and it took him several moments to succeed in his endeavor. When he finally managed it, he was far from upset to discover that the chest only contained books. He'd impressed his father several weeks ago by beginning to pick up reading, and whenever Lokir saw a book, he received a child's excitement. He reached for the first book he could find and, ignoring the purple cover and the strange symbol on it, pried the book open and began to read._

_Immediately, a strange feeling filled him—as if someone were pulling on his mind with a string. But Lokir was nothing if not curious, and he couldn't stop reading at his slow, toddler's pace even if he wanted to. _

_It took him several minutes, but by the time he managed to read to the end of the book, that strange feeling filled his entire body. And then suddenly, without warning, the book collapsed into dust._

_Lokir stared at the ash in his hands for several moments before toddler's tears began to slip down his face, for his new book had just been destroyed. But the tears stopped after a moment, because he discovered something strange in his right hand: a glowing orb of purple light. _

_He giggled as he watched the orb's light shift over his hand and the walls of the cupboard. Then something strange happened: a _pull _in his gut, and the orb suddenly jumped down to the floor. With a loud, indescribable sound, the orb exploded in purple light._

_Lokir was blinded for a moment, and more tears spilled from his eyes as he blinked away the light. But once more, the tears quickly vanished, for sitting in front of him was a small, blue dog. One that he had conjured._

Lokir groaned as consciousness suddenly found him. His head was pounding like a horse was galloping around in his skull, and the memory of his strange dream swirled around in his mind, making it hard to think. But when he finally managed to force his eyes open, alarm forced those thoughts away.

The massive Draugr was standing over him, holding that ebony battleaxe over him like it was about to crack a walnut.

"_Aav Dilon!"_ the Draugr growled out.

Lokir tried to scramble away, but there wasn't anywhere for him to go, and he couldn't move fast enough anyway. All he could do was close his eyes and hope that it would be quick.

* * *

**I have no excuse. Life just got really busy.**


	11. Chapter 11

Rayla was in a haze. The moment the Nordic puzzle door had begun to open, she'd felt the Word Wall begin to call to her, like it had in all the other burial tombs she'd explored. And once she'd taken a step into the final cavern of the room, she had completely forgotten about everything and everyone else.

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been a problem. Whenever something like this happened before, she'd always snapped out of it before any danger came her way. But this strange word, this symbol…it felt different, somehow. In the back of her mind, she had known she was in a trance even as she stepped up to the wall and felt it engrave itself into her mind. She could feel the power that the strange word in another, lost language was emitting, and she could feel it dissipate as the word sunk into her brain.

And then, all at once, it was gone, and she was left shaking in front of the wall. Rayla blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her mind. That was when she realized the situation she had unwittingly created.

"_Aav Dilon!_" she heard a guttural, long dead voice utter.

She spun, sword at the ready as she recognized the sound of a Draugr. But there was no danger—at least, not for her. In less than a second, she had analyzed the situation and berated herself appropriately. She had been so focused on the blasted, possessive word that she hadn't even realized that Lokir was under attack!

The thief was lying on the ground below, bleeding from a small wound in his stomach and a cut on the side of his head. His hood had fallen down, and his terrified face was clearly visible. But his eyes were closed, like he was expecting death, and that was something that she could not accept. No one would be killing the thief on her watch.

In a moment, Rayla was running forward, sword held at her side. When she reached the edge of the elevated platform that the word wall and the Draugr's coffin were on, she jumped—right onto the back of the undead creature.

In hindsight, this wasn't a very smart decision. For one, the Draugr was almost twice her size and could have bucked her off easily. For another, its battleaxe was raised above its head, and all it had to do was shove the blade backwards to split her head like a cantaloupe. But no one had ever said that Draugr were bright.

It growled in displeasure and screamed out, "_Qiilaan Us Dilon!"_ But Rayla didn't understand, and she wasn't listening anyway. She swung her sword around the creature's neck and grabbed the other end with her gloved hand and pulled back as hard as she could, using her body weight to her advantage.

The Draugr gurgled something indecipherable as her sword cut into its thick neck, and its axe dropped to the ground—hopefully nowhere near Lokir. But that meant that the Draugr's hands were now free to reach behind and grab Rayla's shoulders. She had a second to curse before she was hurled forward, slamming into the ground a few yards away and skidding across the mossy stones with a pained grunt.

She had just enough sense to scramble to her feet despite the sharp pain she felt in her shoulder. The Draugr was picking up its axe once more, glaring at her with hatred in its eyes. Luckily, it meant that it was ignoring Lokir for the time being.

Rayla reached for her sword, but only felt air. Her eyes widened as she looked around and realized that her elven sword was sitting right behind the Draugr, where she'd left it after she'd been chucked across the room. That meant that she was virtually defenseless against this undead creature. All she had was her shield, and the wicked axe looked like it could shear right through it with enough force. She'd have to improvise. But her mind was still a little addled from the slight tumble she'd taken, and the word that was ringing around her head.

As the Draugr rushed forward, Rayla lifted her shield, trying desperately to think of something that she could do to defeat this monster. But she never got the chance.

Before the tougher Draugr even got close to her, something big and blue snapped its jaws onto the creature's wrist, eliciting another howl of agony from the undead Nord. Rayla stared in shock as she realized what had happened.

The new, sky-blue creature growled. It appeared to have the form of a large wolf—but not the paltry, half-starved mutts that one occasionally encountered in the wilderness of Skyrim. No, this wolf was well muscled and fierce, and its jaws were firmly locked around the arm of the Draugr even as the undead creature shook the magical animal (the familiar) up and down. Behind them, Lokir stumbled to his feet.

The mage was standing behind the battling wolf and Draugr, his teeth as bared as the wolf he had apparently conjured. Blood dripped down the side of his face, and lightning crackled dangerously on his fingers. He looked _angry_, an expression that Rayla wasn't sure she had seen on him in such intensity. Even as she gaped at him, Lokir lifted his hands and poured a thick stream of electricity into the Draugr.

The lich barely flinched at the lightning that hit it—at first. But the more electricity Lokir pumped out, the slower the Draugr moved, until the axe fell from its fingers. It was still alive, but barely. On its arm, the wolf familiar snarled.

Rayla finally snapped out of it. She shoved her shield onto her back and snatched the battleaxe off the floor with both hands. Then she swung it as hard as she could into the neck of the weakened Draugr.

There was a sickening _squish-thunk_ as the Draugr's head rolled to the ground. A moment later, the body followed, and the summoned wolf barked once at the body for good measure.

"Well," Rayla panted, resting her hands on her knees in an attempt to gain some oxygen back in her lungs. "That was exciting."

"_Exciting?_" Lokir demanded with a wince, clutching his stomach with one hand and the side of his head with the other. "That was—that was…_ow._"

He sat down heavily on a large stone rock, and the strange wolf whimpered and padded over to him, nuzzling the hand on his stomach affectionately. Lokir looked down at the familiar with surprise, as if he couldn't believe the creature was really there. He took his hand off of his head and scratched it behind the ears.

"Are you okay?" Rayla asked, straightening to examine him. He was pale and shaking just slightly from adrenaline, and there was a fair amount of blood on his clothes, but other than that he seemed fine.

Lokir rubbed the dog's head and looked up at her, looking confused and aggravated. "I suppose," he said slowly. "Why didn't you help me at first?" There was a hidden accusation in his voice that wasn't even really that hidden.

She sighed and rubbed the bruise on her shoulder as she stepped over the body of the Draugr, grimacing at the smell of the undead creature. What was she supposed to say? That whenever she was around words like that, she was frozen until the word stuck itself permanently in her mind? That she could feel the magicka pulsing in the strange language as clearly as he felt it in his spell tomes? No, both of those would make her sound crazy. That was the last thing she needed right now.

"It's complicated," she eventually settled for saying. When he cocked an eyebrow at her, she sighed and added, "I'll tell you when we get out of this accursed place."

The wolf cocked its head at her and sniffed in her direction. If such a construct could think, Rayla imagined that it was still trying to figure out what to think about her.

"I didn't know you knew another spell," she said, cocking her head right back at the wolf.

"Neither did I," Lokir stated as he called a healing spell to his hand and began to heal the cut at the side of his face. "I guess that Draugr hit me hard enough in the head to jog my memory of a time when I was a kid and I read a spell book."

Rayla felt her eyebrows raise. "When you were with Jouane?"

He seemed surprised that she had remembered the name of his caretaker. But then his expression darkened. "No. When I was with my father, before I was taken to Rorikstead."

Huh. That would mean that his father knew he had an aptitude for magic, and had given him over to a mage. Perhaps for training? Or something else? She was wise enough to know that Lokir's questions far outnumbered her own for many reasons, so she kept her mouth shut to let him brood, even if she saw the sudden agitated switching of his familiar's tail.

Instead, she climbed back up the steps to search for the stupid Dragonstone that Farengar had sent them (well, really _her_) there for in the first place as Lokir turned his healing spell to his stomach. She scooped up her fallen sword on the way, wiped some of the black Draugr blood off, and sheathed it. When she reached the top and was in front of the word wall again, the image of the single word that had appeared to her returned. That always happened, even if she couldn't understand what the word meant or how to say it. She shook her head to clear her thoughts and turned to the chest near the wall. After rummaging through it for a few moments and finding nothing more than a few bags of gold (which she pocketed, of course; she still had to find a way to pay the blasted thief) and some subpar weapons, she sighed in frustration and turned to the coffin that the Draugr had emerged from. Sure enough, there was a small, flat brown stone laying at the bottom. It appeared to be slightly cracked, but other than that was in good condition. She lifted it out of the coffin carefully, peering at the front of the stone. It was, indeed, a map of Skyrim, with a strange symbol on the front, almost like an arrow pointing downward. Oddly, she could feel a few grooves and bumps on the back of the stone as well, and it was when she turned the ancient map over that her heart jumped out of her chest.

Because inscribed on the back of the stone were the same symbols that were on the word wall—the same symbols that had been engraved in Rayla's mind for years.

She nearly dropped the fragile stone back into the coffin when she made the connection. She could suddenly feel her pulse in her fingertips, as her brain began to process what it could mean. If the symbols were on the back of something called a _Dragon_stone, then…

She shut that thought down before it could progress any further. She didn't want to know where it was going. And if she was lucky, she would never have to find out. The implications were terrifying.

But, as usual, fate seemed to have different plans for her.

* * *

Sorry for the brevity of this chapter. My crow-brain has a bunch of other stuff to do at the moment. However, I'm going to try (TRY) to follow a schedule? more for me than for anyone reading this. Mondays and Thursdays, methinks. Thanks, and someone please shoot a review my way!


	12. Chapter 12

Rayla heard Lokir curse for the millionth time in the past hour and rolled her eyes.

"Really, Lokir, it isn't that bad!" she yelled back at him.

"Oh, really?" his voice came back, at least two yards away from where she thought he had been. "Then why can't I see you?"

"Because it's the middle of the night!"

"Yeah!" Lokir insisted, suddenly becoming visible. He looked frustrated and tired, and it was a feeling that Rayla shared. "During _another_ storm!"

She sighed and rubbed her face. They'd managed to find a tunnel leading out of Bleak Falls Barrow in the final room of the crypt a few hours ago, after Lokir's familiar had faded away, but the moment they'd managed to find the bottom of the mountain, another storm had struck. Luckily, it wasn't a blizzard, but it was enough to obscure the moon from the sky, making the landscape around darker than a dragon's wings. It was also raining hard, drowning out any sounds of carts on the road or wildlife that could help them navigate. Rayla would never admit it, but they were quite thoroughly lost. They'd been walking for two hours, but had been unable to find any form of shelter.

She sighed again. It was becoming a habit around this thief. Besides, she felt another, deeper sense of urgency that was not born of her desire to sleep. The word from the barrow was still burning in her brain. It was always there, if not at the forefront of her thoughts then in the back of them. It was immeasurably frustrating, just like it always was. If she didn't find a way to do something about it soon, she was sure she'd go mad.

And then Lokir, in the middle of muttering more curses to himself, walked face-first into the side of a rock.

He sputtered and fell right back on his rear, and Rayla couldn't help but break out into a laughing fit, despite the rain that filled her mouth as she did. Lokir only cursed more as he struggled to his feet, covered in mud. He nearly slipped and fell right back on his face—eliciting more guffawing on the part of Rayla—but eventually he managed to stand, leaning against the rock for support.

"Oh, yeah, laugh it up," he told her, glowering in her direction.

She wiped a tear from her eye—which quickly mixed with the rain on her face—and straightened. After a moment of staring at the rock with a furrowed brow, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Come on," she told Lokir. "I think you may have just found us some shelter."

As she walked past him, Rayla could practically _hear_ his frown. "I did?"

Rayla's point was only proven a minute later as she walked around the side of the rock and found a small fissure that lead inwards. She relaxed as she climbed inside, glad to have some relief from the oppressive downpour of the weather. She stepped aside so that the clumsy thief could follow as she examined the shelter he had unwittingly discovered.

It was a small cave, only about the size of her basement under Breezehome. It didn't appear to be the lair of any sort of wolf or troll, for she saw no bones strewn about, and no previous evidence of dwelling. It seemed safe, for the time being, and the entrance to the cave was too narrow for any sort of predator to make it through.

Rayla took a moment to squeeze some of the water out of her hair as Lokir slumped against one of the cave walls. They'd been active for quite a while, but it wasn't time for rest. Not yet.

Carefully, she set about removing her armor, for it was wet and damp and otherwise impossible to sleep in. She had grown used to uncomfortable, but she couldn't stand the dampness of wet armor. It took her a few minutes, and when she was finished, she set the pieces of protection as far away from the entrance of the cave, just in case some water should leak in while they were sleeping. Then she set her (thankfully waterproof) backpack on the ground, sat down next to it, and began to rummage around for her journal.

She was well aware that Lokir was watching her curiously as she extracted her leather-bound journal, a quill, ink, and a brand-new candle. Since there was no dry firewood anywhere around, she would have to settle for a damp chill in her bones and a mediocre reading light.

"I don't suppose you could…you know," Rayla said, holding out the candle to Lokir. He cocked his head at the candle for a moment before he shrugged and snapped his fingers, sending a small spark of lightning that ignited the wick of the candle quite nicely. "Thanks."

She stuck the bottom of the candle in the dirt next to her, made sure it was not going to fall over, and opened up her journal to the first blank page that she could find. There weren't many. Then, as she uncapped her bottle of ink and started to dip her quill in it, Lokir spoke.

"What are you doing?" he asked her. He looked curious and confused at her actions—an expression that he'd had for several hours. They hadn't had a chance to talk about her earlier distraction with the word on the wall, either, and she could see some of that frustration bubbling up as well.

Rayla paused in the middle of lifting the quill to her page. Ink dripped onto her pants, but she ignored it. Once again, she was stuck with the question of how she could possibly explain what she was doing and why. If this whole "destiny-partnership" thing was going to work out, she needed him to trust her, not think that she was crazy.

But the word was growing more insistent in her mind, like it knew what she was trying to do. So she settled for just saying, "I'll explain in a minute."

Then she lowered the quill to the page and began to scratch out some writing.

It was impossible to tell how many minutes passed. But, for some time, Rayla's mind was only filled with the shapes and symbols of the word that her brain had absorbed for some strange reason. After looking at the word for only a few minutes, she had every shape, every contour memorized.

Then she was done, and the word's intensity was so far lowered as to be nonexistent. It was still there, in the far reaches of her mind, but not as pressing as it had once been.

It was then that she realized that Lokir had been calling her name for some time.

"Rayla!" he exclaimed, his eyes wide, confused, and worried.

She was alert in a split second, with one hand on the sheath of her sword, which she had laid beside her. "What is it?"

Lokir looked down at her sword, and then shook his head. "Oh, no. Nothing like that. But you've been unresponsive to anything I've said for the past ten minutes. I even told you I was a vampire, and you did nothing!"

"Oh," Rayla said, frowning. She looked back up at him. "Are you?"

"Am I—_no_, I'm not a vampire, Rayla! And stop deflecting!" He seemed aggravated now. It was a strange sight to see, for the thief was usually too busy cowering or being unsure of himself to be aggravated. His brown eyes, illuminated by the candlelight, were dark and focused, a stark contrast to the boyish look that she had sometimes seen there. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. "What is going on?"

For a moment—just a moment—she considered lying to him. Rayla could tell him that she simply became incredibly focused when she was thinking about something, and leave it at that. But she knew that, despite Lokir's rather foolhardy exterior, he was not an idiot, and he wouldn't fall for that pathetic excuse. But beyond that, her parents had always drilled into her head just how bad lying was. They had been a bit neurotic that way.

She pushed away the familiar pang that the thought of her parents had brought and decided to take a risk: the truth. If worse came to worse, he'd just leave, and she wouldn't have to worry about paying him the other half of his money that she didn't have.

"Well," she started, trying to think of the best way to spit it out. "You know that I've been to a lot of crypts like Bleak Falls Barrow."

Lokir nodded along. He still looked plenty aggravated, but he must have been tempering it with patience. It was no wonder he was so frustrated; he still had blood on his robes from the injuries he had received while she was preoccupied with the strange language.

"The wall that we saw," Rayla continued, her brow furrowed. "They have a sort of…power to them."

"I know," Lokir said, wincing with a knowing look on his face.

She nearly fell over. "You _do_?" Maybe she wasn't as crazy as she had always thought.

He nodded again, his expression grim but still curious. "I couldn't even get close to the…'word wall.' It was almost like it was pushing me back, somehow. I was surprised that you could even move."

Ah. Despite her apprehension regarding the words, she felt a flash of excitement. That meant that there _was_ something strange going on with the other language written on the walls in Nordic burial tombs! It wasn't just in Rayla's head. Emboldened by this new information, she pressed forward.

"There's a reason for that," she said, scratching the part of her scar that stretched over her forehead. "I…whenever I get close enough to one of those word walls, it's like everything else gets shut out. And there's this sort of _energy,_ and—"

"And you can't stop looking at it even if you wanted to," Lokir finished. That aggravated look had completely vanished from his eyes, replaced with more of that childlike excitement. Rayla finally recognized it as a scholarly sort of enjoyment.

"Yeah!" Rayla said. Now it was her turn to frown. "How do you know that?"

"Because that's the way I feel whenever I read a spell tome!" he exclaimed. He looked down at the page of the journal that Rayla was still holding, examining the symbol in curiosity. He didn't seem to realize that he was invading her personal space. "And I felt magicka when I got too close!"

She raised an eyebrow as she felt some of the mystery of the words unravel, just a bit. If that was magicka that she had felt as the word stuck itself into her mind, then that must mean that there was something else going on. But why wouldn't Lokir be able to get close, if he were a mage? Perhaps another, non-magical Nord could approach.

"I wonder if Lydia could get close to a word wall like I can," Rayla wondered out loud. "She's not a mage."

Lokir cocked his head at that thought. "Perhaps." He leaned back over to look at the journal in her hands. His eyes were still lit with that scholarly warmth. "These markings almost look like they were made with claws."

And that reminded Rayla of the Dragonstone. She felt the blood drain from her face, but her excitement at making some progress in her investigation of the strange language overpowered her apprehension for a moment. She quickly grabbed her bag and dug around for the carefully wrapped Dragonstone. She withdrew it carefully, aware that the stone was ancient and very fragile. Lokir watched curiously as she unwrapped the stone and peered at the markings on the back.

They did, indeed, look like some sort of creature had carved the language with its claws. Although, she did notice that the carvings on the back seemed less precise than the markings she had seen on the wall.

"That's fascinating," Lokir commented, squinting at the markings, and then at the word that Rayla had etched in her journal. "I wonder what it says."

She coughed as she realized two things: one, they were getting awfully close to considering what had made the marks, and she was positive that she didn't want to know. The second was that Lokir had unknowingly sat very close to her, and the sudden smell of rain and jazbay grapes was incredibly strong.

Luckily, that last problem was fixed as Lokir stood and stretched, completely oblivious to how he had breached Rayla's personal space in his enthusiasm. It was quite surprising, actually; he may have had the profession of a thief and the skills of a mage, but he had the mind of a scholar. Rayla liked scholars—many of them were intensely curious and kind in equal measure.

"We should gets some rest," he said, rummaging through his own pack for a blanket.

"Right," Rayla said, staring at the symbols on the back of the Dragonstone. "Rest."

* * *

When she awoke in the morning, she was rather alarmed to find that the wayward thief was nowhere to be found.

She bolted upright as she woke from another nightmare about Helgen, chest pumping hard. As she felt sweat drip down her brow, she quickly analyzed her surroundings for danger. It took her only a moment to focus on the present and realize that Lokir was not in the cave, and his pack was gone.

She would never admit it, but she had a brief moment of panic. He'd grown on her a little bit, and an unwary traveler in Skyrim could quickly become sabre cat food. Besides, he might have stolen something and taken it with him.

She shot to her feet and grabbed her sword, well aware that if any trouble were to arrive, she was not outfitted in her armor. Her alarm only heightened when she heard footsteps outside the cave. In one motion, she had flicked the sheath off of her sword and had it in a ready position as she stared at the entrance to the cave.

Lokir stumbled inside a moment later, sneezing loudly. His hood was down and his brown hair was mussed up, but he had a wide grin on his face—which quickly disappeared when he saw the sword that Rayla was pointing at him.

"Woah!" he exclaimed, backing up with his hands up in surrender. "Watch the pointy thing!"

Rayla relaxed a bit, lowering her sword, but she kept it unsheathed and in her hand. "What are you doing? Where did you go?"

Lokir grinned again as he lowered his hands. "I know where we are."

She frowned, and felt her eyebrows raise in surprise. "You do? How?" So far, her assessment of him was that he couldn't find his feet with both hands.

He adjusted the straps of the knapsack on his back, still grinning that stupid grin. "I didn't recognize this place last night, but I used to run around in this area a lot when I was a kid."

"I…don't understand," Rayla said, grabbing her sheath off the ground and putting her sword inside.

"Hurry up!" Lokir urged her. He picked up a piece of her armor and tossed it to her. She caught it one-handed.

"Why?" she demanded, feeling just a tinge of alarm.

"Because," he said, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. "We're about ten minutes away from Rorikstead."


End file.
